THE THIRD CHOIR REHEARSAL
by Motsie of Atlantis
Summary: Life appears to have gotten back to normal for the main team at the NCIS:LA office. But it is only an appearance. The "Deep Trouble" that vexed the team is not over even though the members have all been reunited again. Can Nate Getz come in and get them all back in harmony so once again they can destroy evil and help those who need it?
1. Everything's the same, only different

**THE THIRD CHOIR REHEARSAL**

**Summary:** Life appears to have gotten back to normal for the main team at the NCIS:LA office. But it is only an appearance. The "Deep Trouble" that vexed the team is not over, even though the members have all been reunited again. Can Nate Getz come in and get them all back in harmony, so once again they can destroy evil and help those who need it?

**A/N 1:** After I wrote my final installment for the series of stories that comprised the 8 #-Appreciation Weeks on the NCIS:LA Magazine's website, I received many requests to continue those stories. I have not yet seen "Deep Trouble II", and I can only guess at how close I came to the actual solution that Season 6 Episode 1 will present to us. So this story is probably going to be far from canon too. I wrote this based on the two teaser photos for the episode "The Third Choir" and the one of Callen where it looks like he is trying to match Deeks' hair styling. Some of the dialogue from previous episodes are used here. Parts of this story are condensed from other stories that I have already posted.

**A/N 2:** I know that there are some people that have been patiently waiting for the next chapter of Quinn, and I apologize for it. First there were the two months that were taken up by the Appreciation Stories for NCIS:LA Magazine, and then the plot bunnies kept pounding my brain until I started this story. Since this episode will actually be broadcast around the middle of October, I wanted to finish this one first. Corporal Russell Goodman and his wife Charlotte are trying to get pregnant, but are having difficulty doing so. One of the doctors blamed it on all the Agent Orange to which they were both exposed. Be assured, Michelle will be born so she can grow up and become Sam Hanna's wife.

**Disclaimer:** Thanks to Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan, for teaching me to play with the fantastic characters and sets that they have created. Since I don't own them, they made me promise that I return them by their curfew. Although they might be slightly (?) battered and bruised, I did send them home. All the other original characters that you do not recognize, are slaving away for me, trying to come up with an original idea for the next story that I might write.

**THIRD CHOIR REHEARSAL**

**Chapter 1: Everything's the same, only different**

Nell exited ops and just stood on the balcony, looking down on the main floor of the Office of Special Projects mission building. Everything appeared to have returned to normal. Talia had returned back to the DEA, and was no longer stirring up problems for Deeks and Kensi. The two junior agents were sitting at their desks filling out the paperwork from the last small mission they had just completed. The two senior agents were still on desk duty, which was extended for at least two more days. Although, Sam and Callen has passed their physical exams, the two of them were waiting for Dr. Nate Getz to arrive and conduct their psychological evaluations. Hetty was sitting in her office, sipping on a newly brewed cup of tea, glad to be back in the friendly confines of OSP and no longer in Washington, being grilled by the Special Investigative Committee, or at the Russian Embassy, gambling with members of the Russian delegation over who was the best grand chess master. Assistant Director Granger was holed up in one of the unused offices, painfully aware that he was no longer making any of the decisions for the number one team.

But that normality was only on the surface. Underneath that seemingly calm, outward facade, it was so "not normal" that Nell had placed a call to Director Vance and specifically asked him if Nate could be found and sent here, to find out what the problem was.

It was true that Granger was no longer making the decisions for the team, but neither was Hetty. When Callen brought the little ninja back from the investigative committee debacle in Washington, Director Vance reappointed Hetty as operations manager of OSP. He also told the older woman how impressed he was with what Nell had done on the narcosub case, and how he proposed to further the young analyst's career education at NCIS by people from FLETC fly out there and givhaving e her individualized instruction. Hetty concurred with Vance's opinion on Nell's leadership training, even working out her schedule with that of Kirstin Chambers, the computer tech from team two at OSP, who filled in for Nell and Eric, whenever she was needed.

One of the first things that Hetty had done when she returned to OSP was to call Nell into her office and thank her for following the orders she gave the young woman before she went to Washington. Then, shaking her head, she looked at Nell and said, "Off the record, my dear, I don't know how you managed to keep all those balls up in the air that you were juggling, without any of them falling to the ground." She put her cup of tea down and started to count off on her fingers, "Director Vance, Assistant Director Granger, Ms. Del Compo, Mr. Deeks, Ms. Blye, Mr. Beale, both Arkady and Svetlana Kolcheck, all of them you got to work together to rescue Mr. Hanna and Mr. Callen. And in the meantime, all you did was stop a terroristic threat that would have destroyed one of our aircraft carriers and killed hundreds of Navy personnel."

A deep blush rose up Nell's cheeks. "I really didn't do all that much. You remember how the team was so surprised when I grabbed the magazine out of Marc Inman's gun and I told them that 'I just trusted my training'? Well, that's about the same thing that happened here."

"And what training would that be, Ms Jones?"

"I learned a little at FLETC when I was there before my stint with the CIA, but I have learned a whole lot more working with you, and watching how you deal with situations. You don't know how often I thought 'What would Hetty do to make this work'."

"Maybe I shouldn't have come back, then." Hetty said sipping her tea and using the cup to hide her smile.

"I don't want you to think that I am after your job," Nell quickly responded. "I am sooo not ready for any responsibilities like that."

"And yet, from what I heard, you jumped right in and worked out a plan on the fly, without worrying about the responsibilities. That, my dear, is the mark of a very good analyst, a successful agent, a proficient handler, and long lived operations manager, and you are on your way to being all of those, and more."

"You're starting to scare me, Hetty."

"Don't worry, child, it will happen, all in due time. Right now I want to know how you are coming along with your FLETC training."

"Well, we actually haven't done anything so far. You heard that Director Vance had to open it up for anyone here on the West Coast, as long as they qualified. I don't think he expected anyone else in the classes besides me. But there is one other candidate, Joel Fong, a third generation Japanese-American. He's an analyst from the Seattle office, and is taking the classes with me. He is little over a year older than me, and he will stay with Deeks while he is down here in Los Angeles."

"He can keep up with your advanced training?"

"It appears so. He took some classes at Glenco, but he says he can't afford the travel to and from the East Coast to follow through with any regular sustained training."

"Well, Director Vance will find out if he is good enough to continue or not. If he shows promise, the Director will provide him any extra help he needs, you are the proof of that. Or, Leon might just be using this young man to challenge your limits."

"I don't think so, Hetty, Joel appears to be even further along in his training than I am. So if the Director is using one of us to challenge the other, it would be me who is behind trying to catch up with him."

"Well, maybe I will have to give you more practical experience. I know the plans that Leon had for you in my absence, and I know how little time you had to put them into practice. Then Mr. Callen decided to go off the reservation again and came to bring me home. I know all you did to influence Representatives Welch and Graves, and that file of mine that you found that let you into the CIA database. There you found confirmation that 'Operation White Ghost' was nothing more than a contract hit on one of their agents, Jack Simon, whom they felt knew too much. That threat to Director Morton of an Edward Snowden type leak was sheer genius. I know you gave the credit to Mr. Callen, but I also know that you had a big hand in it."

"I really didn't do very much..."

"Hush, child, you should know that I have my sources and know what really went on. So, for the next couple of weeks, I will hand over control of the team to you, just as Director Vance planned for you. You will prepare the plan for what they do, and I will look it over. If I find that you neglected some facet of the operation, or what you propose will not work, I will confer with you and together we can change the planning to something that will."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Hetty had told Nell that she would have control of the team, with her consultation. The problem was that Hetty was giving the young woman no consultation. She just said that everything was fine and approved it, without even looking at it very much. Something else was going on that was distracting the operations manager, something that was causing her a lot more worry than she had before being called to Washington and having to go up in front of the investigating committee to fight to keep her job and team intact. Hetty's distractions were working their way down to each and every member of the team. That was the main reason why Nell requested that Nate Getz be the one sent to do the psychological examinations on Callen and Sam. Nate knew each member of the team better than anyone else, and could probably find out the reason why everyone was off so much that Nell could feel it too.

Director Vance agreed to send the psychologist to help get the team back up to speed. Nell left him a text message that she would come and pick him up when he flew into LA. Nate answered her a little bit later and said that he would arrive at LAX tomorrow afternoon, and he would rent a car at the airport for the first day. He wanted her to pick a spot to meet with him, so he could find out what he would be facing from Hetty and the rest of the members of the team. She asked him to meet her at the parking lot of Dockweiler State Beach, and she would provide a picnic supper for the two of them.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Nell asked Hetty for the afternoon off for the reason that they had been ordered to stand down until they met with Nate Getz. As long as he was already coming in to do the psych evaluations for Callen and Sam, and seeing that the rest of them would have their own psych evals coming up the following month, Director Vance ordered everyone on the primary team to have theirs done all at one time, and that included Hetty and Granger. Hetty granted her the time off, and she drove out to Dockweiler State Beach to await Nate's arrival. Thirty minutes after she parked her Mini Cooper in the parking lot, Nate arrived in his rented Escalade, and parked next to her.

Nell got out of her car, and went over and gave Nate a big hug as he exited his vehicle. "I'm so glad that you were able to make it. Are you hungry? I packed us a lunch, and I have a blanket if you want to go and sit on the sand."

"No. I'd rather take you out for a regular meal a little later, if that's okay with you. Right now I would like to know what your take is on what is happening at the mission."

"You know you never let me pay for a meal when we are together. Why do you do that?"

"To always make sure that you have a guilt complex and answer my questions, why else would I do it, Nell? It's a cheap and easy way for me to pay off my informants," he said with a huge grin on his face.

"So, I am just a source of information for you? And here I thought I was your friend," she said, lightly pushing him in the chest with both her hands, but with an equally big smile on her face.

"I am kinda curious, why did you choose this place for us to meet?"

"When Kensi was gone in Afghanistan, I had to partner up with Deeks. He introduced me to how calming just sitting and watching the ocean can be. Sometimes you can just imagine the water, washing over you, and taking away all your problems, and dragging them out to sea, while leaving you new and clean." Then she looked directly at Nate and said, "I chose this beach because I knew that neither Deeks or Eric would ever come over here and surf. The other beaches have a lot better waves compared to the ones here."


	2. Big Problems for the Small Analyst

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

**Chapter 2: Big Problems for the Small Analyst**

**A/N: This story is based on the two teaser photos for the episode "Third Choir" and the one of Callen where it looks like he is trying to match Deeks' hair styling. Some of the dialogue from previous canon episodes are used here. Parts of this story are condensed from other stories that I have already posted. I hope you enjoy it.**

**A/N 2: I know that this chapter is longer than usual, but Nell has got a whole lot to tell Nate about what was going on the past couple of months at the OSP.**

Dr. Nate Getz looked at Nell, wondering what could be troubling the woman so much that she would choose a location to meet with him where she was actually hiding from the rest of her team. Maybe the situation at the Office of Special Projects was worse than what he was led to believe.

"You said you felt that watching the water had a calming effect on you. Why don't we walk down closer to where the waves are running up on the sand, and you might be able to allow them to drag some of your problems out to sea."

Nell agreed. "Let me go to my car and get the blanket. Then we can sit down on the beach and neither of us will get our clothes too dirty or full of sand."

Nell pulled out an old, green, army-type blanket from the back of her car, shook it out a couple of times and then folded it over her arm, as she joined Nate in slowly walking across the sand in the direction of the water.

They walked together for a few moments in silence. Nate's first question to her completely surprised her, as she stumbled and almost dropped the blanket.

"Nell, are you worried about them knowing you are meeting with me because of what is going on with the rest of the team, or is it something going on with you that you just don't want them to know about?"

"A little bit of both, I guess. But I really don't know which one concerns me more right now. The whole team seemed to be off just a little bit, and that includes me."

"When did you first start feeling this way?"

"You've had a look at our action reports, haven't you?"

"Is there any specific one to which you are referring?"

Nell hesitated a moment, her eyes focused on the sand just in front of her. "For me it started right after Granger took Kensi with him to Afghanistan. You have no idea how often Deeks tried to find out from Eric and me where Kensi had gone. At first we didn't know, and could tell him that honestly. But after a while, when the two of them had filed some of their early reports, we had to lie to him. All he wanted to know was where she was and if she was safe. Any good partner would want to know that. But he got nothing. I felt terrible for lying to him or watching his face as I told him that I couldn't tell him. Hetty wouldn't let me."

"I can see the conflict it would cause in you, your concern for one of your teammates and your loyalty to your boss."

"I don't know, Nate. It seemed like Hetty enjoyed playing with Deeks' feelings. She gave the two of them satellite phones for Christmas. It seemed like a great idea, but the two of them could never get on at the same time to talk. They would text a lot, and after that Deeks appeared a whole lot happier for just a short time, but then the deeper depression would set in because she wasn't here for him to hold, and he couldn't even talk to her."

"Was it that obvious up in ops for the two of you."

"Well, since we were one agent down with Kensi gone, sometimes Deeks was partnered up with both Sam and Callen. He told me he felt like he never fit in when they did that. I don't know if anyone said anything to Hetty, but all of a sudden I was promoted again to agent status and partnered up with Deeks, at least for the most part, but I also worked with Sam and Callen for a few cases. Now I know I told you that I would like to be a full time agent, sometime in the future, but not now, not like this. After Kensi came back and was on desk duty and I was sent out with "her" partner, I came back and told her the same thing. I want it on my own, not because someone else is gone. Living like that is like tiptoeing through a mine field, always second guessing everything you do, for fear it is gonna blow up in your face and set you back."

"Didn't Hetty see that, or couldn't you go and talk to her?"

"Who can really talk to her, when she wants to stonewall people? Callen tried to find out about Afghanistan, and he was shut out. Every time Deeks asked about it, Hetty turned his requests aside. The Duchess of Deception was working way too hard to protect Jack Simon from being assassinated by the CIA, ...or Kensi, as she sought out the 'White Ghost' to complete her mission, ...or the rest of the team here in LA, to keep us from falling completely apart, ...but most of all, herself, as she was butting heads with the top officials in at least two federal agencies, perhaps even more. And she was always doing it by going back to her old ways, not by telling the truth, but by spinning whatever story would be most believable at the time being."

"You're sure of this?"

"I caught her twice where her stories didn't match up. I didn't say anything, so I don't know if she found me out on this. On one I went back and did a quick edit to make the facts match her story. It wasn't much, but it could trip her up. With the other one there was no way to edit out the discrepancy. If someone catches it, I have no idea how she will explain her way out of it."

"God, Nell, you are changing official documents. I seem to recall something like that, in itself, is a crime for which you can be dismissed, even sent to prison."

"Been there, done that, won't be the last time, either. The longer you stay in this game, the deeper you sink into the mire of illegality. You tell me that you haven't done something similar in writing up psychological evaluations, where you added something that wasn't there or took out something that was. I'm not accusing you, I'm just saying..."

"Okay, I see what you are getting at."

"Did you fully understand what was going on with Kensi's rescue in Afghanistan?"

"I read a little bit about it."

"You need to read the full action reports. Even those don't tell the whole story. I'll get you access to them tomorrow morning. You really need to understand all that was going on over there if you want to help the team, especially Sam, Kensi, and Deeks."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't begin to tell you, because they are not my stories to tell. After you read everything, I will talk to you about my role in it. I'm ashamed at some of the things I did and the repercussions that resulted from them."

"Nell..."

"Just read them, Nate, and talk with us afterward. We all need to have these feelings become less painful somehow."

"Anything else you want to tell me now?"

"Just the whole narco-sub fiasco. Hetty had been recalled to Washington to answer charges about what she and the team did in Afghanistan. There was some talk about there being a leak somewhere in the office here, but that has never been confirmed. I would put my money on Granger, but he told Hetty he didn't do it."

"Do you believe him?"

"I don't know what to believe where he is concerned. Hetty told me that I would make the decisions on the day to day operations of the team, and she would talk to me every day to monitor what I was doing. Then Granger marched in here, telling everyone that he had been appointed as Hetty's replacement. Hetty must have known that this might happen, because she gave me access to most of her files, and showed me how to work around Granger in a short letter she left me."

"From what I heard you did a fantastic job at that."

"Well, somebody had to do it. When Callen and Sam went missing on the narco-sub, Granger appointed a DEA agent, Talia Del Compo, as the lead agent on the case. I mean, she worked with Deeks on one previous case; that was the sum of her experience working with us, and Granger makes her the lead agent. He wouldn't listen to any of the intel that Eric and I had developed. He was gonna prove that he knew better. I don't know if you read the sanitized versions of the action reports."

"Sanitized version?"

"The ones we all wrote for him to include in the records. Callen asked us each to write up a second action report on what they thought really happened on that case and gave them to me. I gave him a thumb drive with those reports on it, but I kept a copy of it. I'll let you read it, but it is an unofficial version, and has no official standing."

"Did anyone else see it then."

"I think Callen showed it to Vance before he brought Hetty home. Granger started telling people how he planned the rescue and brought it off. He must have mentioned it to the wrong person, because Vance called us up to ops on a conference call and came down on Granger like a ton of bricks. He told him how the operation really went down and then removed him from control of the primary team and gave it to me, at least until Hetty came back or someone else could be appointed."

"Congratulations, from the little I have found out, you deserved it."

"Well, it lasted about two days until Callen brought Hetty back. You think I can list it on my resume if I get fired from NCIS?" she asked, with a big smile on her face.

"I think that's highly unlikely. They need for you to take some leadership courses at FLETC."

"Vance has said he would fly instructors here for personal training. We just got things set up to start next month."

"I have never heard of him doing anything like that before. He must really want you to stay in NCIS. So I don't see any problems with that at all, or is there something that I'm not seeing? "

"I guess the latest problem was when Director Vance told me that there would be one more person in my FLETC classes. If I was just going to be the only one in the in the classes, I felt that I could move at my own pace. I know the Director had said that he felt that I would complete the courses in half the time it would normally take, and yes, Hetty once mentioned that I had the highest IQ in all of NCIS, but I can't say that I am as confident in myself as my superiors are in me. If it were just me in the class, it would not matter. If I didn't understand a concept, if I forgot to apply a rule or regulation, if some way of working on a problem would appear to be completely foreign to me, it wouldn't matter. My instructors would patiently go back and show me what I did wrong and let me try to work it out for herself."

"Okay, I guess that's true. You are a very intelligent girl, Nell."

Her embarrassment at what Nate just said about her broke out in a deep pink blush all over her cheeks that she tried to hide it by bowing her head. After a moment, she continued, but her voice had gotten a whole lot quieter. "But that's one of the biggest parts of the problem. With someone else in the class there would probably not be any time for that. It would be more like hold on for dear life and try to keep even with this guy who must be as good as I am and probably a whole lot better. I met him on a Skype call and he really seemed to have it all together, where I couldn't even seem to put together four words to make a coherent sentence. The responsibilities they want to place on me sometimes just seem so overwhelming."

Nate reminded her how she just acted and didn't think out what the consequences would be in the narco-sub case. "Nell, sometimes you overthink things. Maybe you just need to get out into the world and mingle with people that are more like you. How old is this guy that had you so tongue tied, and does he have a name?"

"He is just a little over a year older than I am. His name is Joel Fong, a third generation Japanese-American. He's an analyst in the Seattle office."

"Hmmm, okay..."

"And just what is that supposed to mean?"

"I'm just wondering if there could be another reason why you might be tongue tied around someone like him, besides your fear of him showing you up intellectually."

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

They finally got to a spot about thirty feet from the water. "Is this close enough to the water for you to have the ocean do it's magic?"

"Mmm hunh," Nell replied as she shook out the blanket and let it settle on the sand.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

As they sat down, Nate asked her another question that she wasn't expecting. "So, how's the office romance going?"

"You mean Deeks and Kensi?"

"Well, unless you have got a hot little affair going on with someone?"

"Right," she said, pushing the arm he was using to support himself, so he fell flat on the blanket. "I wanna tell you that at the OSP, romantic possibilities are extremely limited. Deeks and Kensi are sort of paired up, in an on again, off again relationship. Lately it seems to be more off than on. Having Talia here didn't help matters any. When Granger first appointed her to the team, because he thought the narco-sub case was still about drugs and she was our DEA liaison, she and Kensi did not have a good first meeting. I thought Kensi was gonna scratch her eyes out for some of the comments she made." Then Nell said with slight laugh in her voice, "or each one of them strip off everything they were wearing above their waist and then demand that Deeks choose who had the better boobs."

"I bet Deeks would have loved that."

"That's a bet you would have lost."

Nate arched his brow as he looked at her, giving her the impression he was asking, "Come on, you don't really mean that, do you?"

"Deeks was so terrified that it might come down to that. No matter which one he would have chosen, the other one would have torn him apart. As it was, Deeks had some pretty serious bruises from where each of them pounded him."

Nate began singing "The fists of love, have hit your arm?" to the tune, "The Look of Love."

Nell started laughing so hard she could hardly get her next words out. "Yup,..." Then she got all serious again, "But Deeks and Kensi seemed to have hit rock bottom the night everything wrapped up. She called me later that night and wondered if I could trace his phone to find out where he was. I told her that I wouldn't do that. She started bitching about how he was two-timing her with Talia. But they must have patched things up. They were all lovey-dovey when they came into the office on Monday morning. And it just keeps going on like that, one day they're up, the next day they're down. We just play it by ear where those two are concerned**."**

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

"And what about you and Eric? I remember you telling me that he was not your type, but that he had a huge crush on you, and you worried about him being hurt if you told him how you really felt about him."

"Eric seemed to have lost his crush on me. He has found someone by the name of Svetlana Kolcheck across town at the Russian Cultural Ministry. She is the daughter of Arkady Kolcheck, and helped us out when we were trying to rescue Callen and Sam from the narco-sub."

"And Hetty allows that? I can't believe that she would let Eric go over there, not with all the secrets that he knows. That's a walking security disaster."

"But you forget that Svetlana has just as many security secrets locked in the back of her brain as Eric does. The two of them have agreed not to talk shop, unless one of them is helping the other one out. Apart from that first time, when he was working with her on the narco-sub case, he has not been over in their bunker to use their computer setup, and she has never set foot in ops at the OSP."

"Then how can they work together on anything?"

"The two of them have set up a secure network between two computers. These are set up like burn phones. Everything can come in from the other computer, and then it is sanitized. The two of them have written some extremely wicked antiviral software and mounted it in both of the machines. This breaks down every message coming in to its basic components, and only then is it transferred to the main system in each place."

"There still could be problems or abuse, even with as careful a system as that."

"You don't seem to understand, Nate. He cares a lot for her and she has that same care toward him in return. I'm not saying it's love, yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if within the next year you got an invitation to their wedding."

"It's gone that far?"

"Yup, and to think, when I asked him to go over there that first time, he was so freaked out. No way he wanted to leave the friendly confines of ops. What he found was a beautiful young woman, whose computer skills probably match his own, with each one's strongest areas in the area the other one is weak. He's taken her out a couple of times to teach her how to surf. She even gets his jokes, and hers are similar to his."

"WOW."

A huge smile came across Nell's face. "That's exactly what we all thought. It is so good for Eric to have someone with him, who understands who he is and what he does. Sveta is not gonna try to change him, and he is not gonna try to change her. The two of them mesh so perfectly, and each of them are so happy."

"Then I can see how Hetty would allow it. If something happened to either of them, they would have all the agencies of two separate governments working together to straighten it out."

"Exactly. Not to mention all of the shared information that we are giving them and getting from them. We have new leads on several cases that we thought were dead ends."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

"Okay, what about Sam? How do you feel that he is doing?"

"Sam has been married to Michelle longer than he has been partnered with Callen, and it used to be hard to say which bond was stronger for the big guy. But I'm beginning to feel that his ties to Michelle are winning out over those to Callen."

"What makes you say that?"

"I think he's been in way too many close calls, just like this last one.'

"His claustrophobia?"

"That was part of it. When the Russian Naval Spetsnaz units disabled the narco-sub's propulsion and then forced it to the surface, the terrorists tried to flood the forward compartment to take it back under. Unfortunately both Sam and Callen were in that compartment, and it was almost filled by the time they were gotten out of there. Sam had swallowed a lot of water and wasn't in the greatest condition when they got him on deck. They almost had to carry him over to the trawler, and you know how well his pride accepted that. "

"I wonder if he saw Jocko?" Nate said to himself.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, Nell, please forget that I ever said that. It's something that he confided to me, and I was wrong to mention it out loud."

"Oh...kay. Noted and filed. Anyway, this was another example of Callen sort of going off the reservation, and Sam being dragged along, to his detriment. Sam wanted to wait until Deeks and Kensi arrived before they went on board the sub. But you know Callen. I guess he even asked Sam, 'What's the worst that can happen?' Well, Callen doesn't have anyone waiting at home for him, wondering when or if he is coming back from a mission. Michelle has had to put up with that for years. She knows how often Callen has gone rogue, and how much extra it endangers her husband when he does this. I am surprised that she has not laid down the law to Sam, to help keep him safer, not only from the missions, but also from his partner."

"Is it really that bad?"

"You can see it in his facial features. Nate, if he would have hair, it would not be gray, it would be snow white. It's wearing him down, fast. The only one who doesn't see it is his partner."

Nell looked around, as if she expected someone else to be listening in to them. "There's more to it than just that, but I am not the one who said anything about it to you. Please promise me that, Nate."

"Okay, we will consider this a counseling session. Everything that you tell me is covered by the physician / patient privilege understanding. Of course, you also understand that it works both ways, you can't tell anyone what we have talked about either."

"I wouldn't dream of it. Things are way too tense for me to add any more to any of our lives."

"Sam has another source of tension that he has to deal with?"

"Ahhh...yeah. I guess things are not going so good for him at home." Seeing the look on Nate's face she quickly shook her head and said, "No, it's not anything like that. Neither one of them are having an affair, unless you count Sam's bromance with Callen. You know that Michelle worked for the CIA at one time, then sorta retired to have their daughter, Nina. Well, now that Nina is almost a teenager, Michelle wants to go back to work. You know what happened the last time she was activated as Quinn. Both Sam and Deeks still have nightmares about that. From what I hear Sam absolutely refuses to talk about it with her. The one he does talk about it with is Deeks, and that is part of Marty's problem of making a more permanent commitment to Kensi, because he sees the same thing happening with them. Right now he doesn't want to do anything to destroy their partnership like that would do."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

"So that just leaves Callen. What is going on with him? Any romance in sight for your fearless leader? Nate asked, not really expecting her to answer.

"Well, if you are meaning with me, I don't see that happening at all. I know that I told you that from the very first day that I met the Senior Agent in Charge, I had about as big a crush on him as Eric had on me. I hated it so much when he was out in the field, being shot at, blown up, knifed, involved in a car crash, and I had to watch it on the monitors, or even worse, just listen to the open mics and imagine what pains his body was suffering. I knew that I could not show any overt amount of affection toward him, because I never received any hint of those type of feelings from him in return. Yes, he was the first one that I saw leaning over me, talking tenderly to me, after I fought for my life with Robert Brown in the boat shed and ended up on the floor with a concussion. And yes, most recently he said he would kiss me if I would have been there, when I found out all the dirt on the committee members investigating Hetty. But that was safe for him to say, since I was on the other side of the country. He sees me as a tool, to be used whenever he needs information or some other service I can perform for him in ops. The only way he sees me as a person is just like all of the other guys on the team, like their little sister, someone to watch over and protect, but so wrong to even think about in any sexual way. I guess that just like Eric, I am gonna have to get over this crush I have on Callen and look elsewhere. "

"Well, maybe this new guy in your FLETC class might be the one you are looking for."

"Joel Fong? You think that maybe he might be the one I need to check out? I don't think so."

"You were the one who said it, Nell, 'I am gonna have to get over this crush I have on Callen...'"

"I don't know. I really have no idea what is going on with Callen. You're not gonna recognize him at all. From all appearances, he is just letting himself go, or he and Deeks were having some sort of contest of who could appear the shaggiest before Hetty demanded them to clean themselves up. It had nothing to do with attempts to placate Sam and Michelle setting him up with Joelle. As he was driving me home from our so-called 'victory celebration' with the narco-sub case, Callen admitted to me that there was nothing developing between the two of them. Neither wanted to enter into any type of long term relationship, but that there were times when each of them felt the need for someone to be there for them, and the sex between the two of them was very satisfying."

Her fingers were teasing one of the threads from the edge of the blanket as she said this latest little bit about Callen to Nate. She hesitated for a few seconds, and then Nell looked down at what she was doing and tried to rip the thread from the blanket. Her voice dropped to a whisper, and Nate could have sworn that he heard the silent tears fall from her eyes as she painfully breathed, "What guy ever tells another girl something like that?"

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Nate thought to himself, _**Without question, time to change the subject – for now – but something that clearly had to be worked on when he met with her during the week. This was an open wound that had to be healed over, one way or another.** _"So, any heads up you want to give me about either Hetty or Granger?"

"I don't know what to tell you about Hetty. She is preoccupied with something that she has not shared with me, and I don't think she has shared with anyone. She has gone into a lot of her old records, the ones she kept when she was working with the CIA. Whenever I get close and she has one of those open, she immediately closes it so I can't see what she is reading about.

"Knowing Hetty as I do, I don't think that she would just be reminiscing. You don't have any new cases that maybe tie into what she did back then, or maybe something that went unfinished?"

"I don't know. She has never told me about any that are still ongoing. Those files are ones that I have never seen. She has asked me not to look into them, and so far, I have obliged her. I really dread the time that someone is going to have to go back through all those old files and find out who among all the lifetime enemies she made is still out there, or even worse, still active."

"I don't think you are going to have to worry about that. It will probably have such a high clearance level required just to read the names of those files that maybe even a presidential clearance might not be high enough."

Nell looked at him and giggled, "You think? Anyway, Hetty has left enough potential problems among the team by acting like the stoic ninja we both know she can become.""

"Sometimes I think that a deaf mute might be persuaded to answer questions before Hetty would, if she thought that an answer is not something that you deserve."

"And she's been doing that to almost everyone. She made Deeks think that Kensi was assigned to the Afghanistan mission because she was punishing him for getting so involved in a relationship with one of her agents. Hetty knew who the 'White Ghost' was, but didn't tell any of that to Kensi, before she was sent out on a wild goose chase that lasted almost six months. When Sam found the picture of Kensi, laying there dead with her throat cut, and Deeks wanted to see it, she ordered us to send it to him."

Nell was openly weeping as she went back to that memory. "Nate, I could hardly look at it; it was so gruesome. I can't even imagine what Deeks was feeling when he saw it. We heard the rage start to build up in him, before Hetty ordered the transmission cut. Something happened with him, and nobody knows what. It changed him, Nate, and not for the better. He came back a different man. I don't know if Hetty truly realized what she had done."

Nell had to go into her purse to get a Kleenex so she could dry the tears streaming down her face and blow her nose. It took her a few more seconds as she tried to compose herself again.

"I'm sorry, Nate. I have to take some blame for how much Afghanistan changed all of us. I should have demanded that the Director stand all of us down, until you could come in and clean up the mess each of us was carrying in our minds. The team was stood down for one week, plus any time needed for injuries to heal. They got Dr. Pharnum to come in here and meet with each of us for a half hour, and then he said we were all good to go. I keep kicking myself for not asking for you. How much damage have I done to the team, to the people I love, by just going along with what those in authority wanted."

Nate pulled her into his arms as best he could, allowing her body to run through all her emotions. With one hand he was rubbing circles on her back, trying to calm her down, as he whispered in her ear, "It's okay, Nell. It's not your fault. It's okay, I am here now and I will help everyone deal with whatever still is bothering them about that mission. Please, please trust me, Nell. You were brave enough to bring it up so that I knew about it. You have helped every one of them by what you have just done. It's okay. We will work through this. I won't leave until I have talked it over with everyone. It will be okay. Do you believe me, Nell?"

Nell looked at him with her big hazel eyes still glistening from the tears she shed. She sniffed three or four times before she answered him in a voice that he only heard once before, from a five year old girl who had badly hurt her leg. "...yeeees, you got to help all of them. They all hurt, ...like I do."

"I will, Nell. I will work on this with everyone on the team. I give you my word."

"Thank you, Nate."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

When Nate felt that she had calmed down, he inquired about the last member on whom he would have to do a psychological evaluation, Assistant Director Owen Granger. "You said earlier that Granger and you don't exactly see eye to eye. Was that something that started with Afghanistan?"

"No, It started even before that. I don't think that Granger has any idea how big a part both Eric and I play in the team dynamics. I don't think he feels that we have any original thoughts, but are just androids, brought in to translate the digital data into words that human beings can understand."

"Come on, Nell. It really can't be as bad as all that?"

"I heard from Hetty that he once told her that he thought her meerkats needed a new exercise wheel, when he saw Eric and me coming down the steps from ops."

Nate bit his lip as he tried unsuccessfully to keep from chuckling at the image that formed in his mind.

"So, is that the only reason why you and he do not play nice and get along"

"No. Granger was really pissed when Director Vance offered me the position of office manager for the primary team. I can understand why he feels that way about me. I did sorta go around his authority to help Callen and Sam. But if we would have left it for him, we still would be looking for that submarine somewhere off the coast of Columbia, and someone would have to explain why several hundred Navy servicemen lost their lives when a aircraft carrier was sunk. He knew his way was right, and nobody could talk him out of it. When I tried, all I did was rub him the wrong way. It seems like everyone is doing that these days."

"Who else do you think is 'rubbing him the wrong way'?"

"You mean besides Hetty, and me, well, let's see – ahhhh, ...Deeks, ...Kensi, and maybe ...Callen. I'm not sure about Sam and Eric."

"All of them? I can't believe that."

"Okay, all of this is from the Afghanistan mission. Hetty told me that Granger asked for Callen to be assigned as the sniper to take out the 'White Ghost'. The last person who tried to take him out ended up beheaded. This was looked upon as a suicide mission, and Granger picked Callen because he thought he had the least to lose, at least that was what he said."

"If that were the case, why did Hetty send Kensi on the mission?"

"Hetty said she told Granger, 'My team, my call'. She later told me that she knew that the 'White Ghost' really was Jack Simon, who had worked for the CIA and now wanted out. Hetty had some connection with Jack and knew that Kensi couldn't kill her former fiance. She didn't intend on Kensi being captured and tortured. She didn't expect that the team would be that close to being killed because of it."

"So Kensi was upset with Granger taking her to Afghanistan?"

"It wasn't that so much. She knew that it was an assignment and it was given to her. It was more how she felt he treated her while she was there."

"And what did she mean by that?"

"She told me that Granger was always watching her, as if there was some connection between the two of them. No matter where she went, no matter what she did, Granger was always there. No one else paid any attention to her, almost treating her like she wasn't really there, because she was already dead and her body just didn't realize it yet. But not Granger. It started to creep her out so much, that after she took a warning shot at Jack, she lied to Granger about missing the shot, and then snuck out of camp just to get away from Granger and try to talk with Jack. From that point on the mission went all to hell."

"Was Afghanistan the reason why Granger had problems with Deeks too?

"I don't think so. This was going on before Kensi went to Afghanistan. When Deeks first joined the team, we didn't exactly welcome him with open arms. Each of us, to some extent, didn't think that he would fit in, because he wasn't an agent, but just a cop. He has proved himself over and over that he is the equal of anyone on the team, and in some cases, even better. Granger has never gotten out of that way of thinking. He especially has problems with Deeks being Kensi's partner, but I just don't know why."

"Here I thought you were learning all of Hetty's secrets. She hasn't taught you how to read minds and know everything that is going on yet?"

Nell blushed again and then looked at him quite seriously. "Have I given you enough information now that you can take me to dinner? It's starting to cool off here and I'm really getting hungry. I am a real cheap date. You gonna feed me or do I have to take my old, cold sandwiches and go home and eat them all by myself?"

"No, you don't have to do that," Nate told her as he helped her to her feet and then picked up the blanket. "I will feed you. Where do you want to go?"

She laughed at him and said, "You're the one who first mentioned it, and you are the one who will pay for it..."

"But you know where all the good places to eat around here are. I really would like some good seafood. Where do we go."

"I know just the place. Follow me and get ready to have your taste buds tantalized."

As Nate folded up her blanket and they started walking back toward the parking lot, he asked her, "This place is really that good?"

"Good enough to get recommended to me by both Deeks and Callen."

"Then let's go. I'm getting hungry, too."


	3. Bigger Problems for Hetty

**Chapter 3: Bigger Problems for the Smaller Opersations Manager**

**A/N: After I wrote my final installment for the series of stories that comprised the 8 #-Appreciation Weeks on the NCIS:LA Magazine's website, I received many requests to continue those stories in the reviews and PMs. I saw "Deep Trouble II", and I was in the same ocean with a similar target, but that was as close as it got. So this story is probably going to be far from canon, too. I wrote this based on the two teaser photos for the episode "Third Choir" and the one of Callen where it looks like he is trying to match Deeks' hair styling. Some of the dialogue from previous canon episodes are used here. Parts of this story are condensed from other stories that I have already posted. I hope you enjoy it.**

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Nate arrived the following morning before any of the agents did. He was not surprised that Hetty was in her office already, nor that Nell and Eric were already up in ops. He stopped in Hetty's office to officially check in before going to work.

"Morning, Hetty. Can I get you a refill on your tea, or are you good?"

"Good Morning, Mr. Getz. Thank you, I am fine. I imagine that you will want to go to the office you usually use to conduct your interviews?"

"If that is okay with you, Hetty. It is the one that furnishes the best mood with those I am interviewing. It's large enough to have the couch, and the two overstuffed chairs in addition to the desk and regular chairs. The only thing that I wonder is if they fixed the blinds, so that the light can be lowered."

"If it hasn't been seen to already, I will have it done today."

"Thank you, Hetty."

Nate went over to the small kitchen and rummaged around in the cabinet until he found his favorite coffee cup, the one with the picture of a bald Sigmund Freud, pinching his nose with one hand to kill the smell, and holding the dead Schrödinger's cat by the tail with the other. Filling his cup, he went up the stairs and briefly thought of stopping in ops, before going to his office. Knowing that he would have to interview the Operations Manager, and not wanting to get on her bad side so early in the week for breaking her rule of no food of drink in ops, he thought better of it and went right to his office.

As he sat down behind his desk and turned on his computer, he found that he had an interoffice memo already waiting for him. He recognized it as coming from Nell, and saw that it was password protected. Each member of the team had their own link with his computer here, and each had their own password to ensure privacy. Using the password she provided, Nate opened up Nell's memo to find the files she had mentioned the day before. One of them was quite lengthy, so Nate gave up all thought of transcribing his mental notes of the meeting he had with the political analyst yesterday, and sat back in his chair and began to read. It wasn't long before he opened a new file, and just book-marked it so he could write his notes about the incredible story he was reading.

Half an hour later, his coffee gone and a page and a half of notes already written, Nate rubbed the bridge of his nose and decided he needed to get up and move around just a bit. He closed the files he had opened, and placed them in a heavily encrypted folder before he turned his computer off.

He wandered back down to the kitchen for another cup of coffee, noticing that Hetty was on the phone, and the call was not a pleasant one. On his way back, he stopped in the bullpen, and engaged in some light small talk with the four agents seated there.

All of a sudden there was a loud, sharp, piercing whistle from the balcony. Every eye in the bullpen looked up. The doors of ops swooshed open and Eric and Nell rushed out. Hetty didn't even bother looking at how surprised everyone appeared to be. She just said, "We have a case." and led the way into ops.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Nate put his coffee cup down on Callen's desk and followed the agents up into ops. When he got up there he saw Callen look over at Eric and Eric shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders, telling him that he had no idea what was going on.

Hetty was the one who led the briefing. All of a sudden, the plasma held the picture of a man the team had encountered before.

"This is..." Hetty started to say.

"Mattias" Callen spat out the name, remembering that this man tried to kill off Hetty the last time that they had an encounter with him.

"I thought we were done with him after you gave him Renner's book of old, cold war spies. I know that Nell doctored the information he received, but that was what, two, three years ago?" Sam asked.

"You didn't know it, Hetty, but we had a final meeting with him." Callen confessed. "We showed him another book, and threatened to give it to his wife. It was all about the little love nest that he set up for his mistress, and his secret bank accounts he was amassing for his retirement. We told him if anything, and we made sure he understood what that word meant, if anything happened to you, he would end up with nothing, because all of us would come after him."

"I so hope that his wife found that out on her own." Kensi added.

"Unfortunately, I have learned that would no longer is a threat for him. Neither of the two women are in the picture any longer. His wife was electrocuted in their home eleven days ago when a radio walked across the bathroom, and jumped into the tub as she was taking a bubble bath. His mistress decided to jump out of a fifteenth story window while she was home alone last week."

Deeks asked her, "Has the LAPD looked into these two deaths? On the surface that seems very suspicious."

"No matter how many suspicions we may have, Mr. Deeks, there was nothing officially found to suggest that it was anything else than an accident in both cases."

"So in other words, a professional hit, and a possible LAPD cover up?" the detective wanted to know.

"You may form your own opinions on the matter. Officially, both cases have been closed."

Sam looked at Hetty with suspicion written all over his face, "So, what are we supposed to do about it? From what I can see, we have nothing to do with those deaths. It's not a military or governmental matter."

"Mr. Hanna, do you recall the circumstances that led up to the team having to go to Afghanistan?"

"Yeah, Hetty, I was there so I knew about it."

"Would you say that was a military or governmental matter?"

"Well, I guess it was governmental, because the White Ghost was supposed to be a terrorist."

"And would you say we should get involved if the same three letter agency tried to do the same thing, only with a different recipient and in our own back yard?"

"I would say we should, especially if it involved a member of our team, like the White Ghost involved Kensi."

"It does, Mr. Hannah."

Sam looked around at everyone up in ops before speaking to Hetty again. "I don't know of anyone who is even remotely related to Mattias, unless it's G, but I doubt that. You are the only one who knows much about him."

"Precisely, Mr. Hannah. His family and mine were together in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II, near what now is the city of Terezin in the Czech Republic. They were among the lucky ones, not having to work in the mines, but were required to sort through and repack the clothing confiscated from other Jews, so it could be sent out for Germans who had lost their homes from Allied bombing. After the camp was liberated by the Russians, both families made their way west and settled in Stuttgart, less than a block away from each other. We both were born in the same year, and grew up together, for almost eight years, as children in Stuttgart. Then my distant relatives here in the United States heard about us, and sponsored our move to this country. Mattias' parents had no such relatives to sponsor them, so they moved back into the East German zone, just outside Berlin, where most of their family was living."

Callen looked at her in amazement, "So, Mattias is a childhood friend of yours?"

"Let us just say, an acquaintance, Mr. Callen. We both are products of our environment. I grew up among all the freedoms of the West and chose the occupation I am in. He grew up under the regimentation of the Communist State, and was assigned to the life that he lived. Both of us did well. Sometimes we worked together, other times we were opponents. But we always remembered where we came from, and how easily that other person could have been us."

"So, we are gonna go up against the CIA one more time?" Deeks asked.

"It would appear so," Kensi answered her partner.

"Ah, Hetty, just one..." Callen was cut off by the tiny Operations Manager.

"Already noted. Mr. Hanna, Mr. Callen, you will please make yourselves available to Dr. Getz today, so he can sign off on your psychological evaluation, and you can join in this operation?"

This time it was Nate who tried to get a word in, even raising his finger to try to get Hetty's attention.

"Ms. Blye, Detective Deeks, you will go and pick up Mattias and bring him to the boat shed. I'm downloading his address to your phones now." She pressed a button on her tablet and the address appeared. Deeks raised his eyebrow at Kensi, but she just shook her head, telling him they could talk about it later. "Please make sure that you are not followed as you deliver him here."

"Yes, ma'am, they both said and turned to leave.

"Ms. Jones, you and Mr. Beale find out all you can on Mattias, especially over the last five years. I will shortly send you a list of aliases that I have known him to use to help your search."

"Dr. Getz, if you could perform a cursory examination of my two senior agents, that they can join in this operation, I will provide you with unlimited access to them and to me when the time permits."

"Oh no, Hetty. You are not going to do that to me again. This case will end and another will begin and there will be no time available for me. No. When this case ends, I will get unlimited time with all the staff that I can conduct the psychological evaluations. No new cases will be accepted."

"Fine, Dr. Getz. I will then expect two senior agents available later this afternoon."

Sam and Callen were left looking at each other with a puzzled expression on each of their faces as Hetty marched out of ops to get the aliases for the two techs.

"Gentlemen," Nate addressed the two agents, "you heard Hetty. If you want coffee, go get it and then I will meet you in my office."

"Both of us?" Callen asked.

"Well, Hetty did say, 'a cursory examination'. She wants you available as soon as possible. I am supposed to make that happen, so, yes, both of you."

"Okay, will see you there in five."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Five minutes later all three men were in Nate's office. Nate looked at each of them and said, "You both realize that I have been granted unlimited access to the two of you after this mission is over?"

Both of them just grunted their answer.

"Okay, now, how many fingers am I showing you, as he held up his fist with only his index finger extended."

"What?" Sam asked.

"How many fingers do you see? It's a simple question. Do you have an answer?" Nate asked.

Sam shook his head. "One, you are showing just one finger."

"Callen, how many do you see."

"Same as Sam, just one."

Nate started writing on a sheet of paper he pulled out of a folder that was on his desk, as he said, "Both agents were able to process visual information and came up with a correct conclusion to questions pertaining to that information."

Looking back at the two agents, Nate continued by asking, "Callen, when you get hungry, do you usually get something to eat?"

"Yeah..."

"And Sam," he looked now at the big man, "when you get hungry or tired, do you get something to eat or go to bed?"

"Of course, what kind of stupid question is that?"

"Just bear with me for a moment." Nate continued writing on that form, "Both agents exhibit normal reactions to their bodily needs and deal with them in the normal way."

Finally, Sam, do you hate Callen enough to want to kill him or otherwise harm him?"

"No, of course not. He's my partner. Why would I want to do that?"

And Callen, do you hate Sam enough to want to kill him or otherwise harm him?"

"No. I would never do that to Sam. Why?"

"Nate continued to write as he said, "Both agents able to deal with interpersonal relationships."

Then he looked up at the two of them, "Okay. Report to Hetty. You two are free to go."

Callen looked so surprised as he asked, "That's it? Nothing more?"

"Nope." Nate continued to write on the page. "Tell Hetty I will send a copy of the report as soon as I'm done."

As they got up and left the office, Callen said to Sam, "I just wish all the evaluations would go like this."

Overhearing him, Nate told the departing agents, "Just don't count on it." and started laughing.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Hetty had just sent a list of aliases for Mattias up to Nell and Eric. There were 22 German, 3 Hungarian, 4 Romanian, 3 Czech, and 7 Russian, and these were just the ones that she knew of. Even she was surprised when she saw how many there were, each indicating a different time that she or another US agent had encountered him. Then she remembered of all the aliases that she had used in her previous work with the CIA and NCIS. _**Ah, Mattias, we are truly warriors of the old school. I doubt if there will ever be any that lead as many different lives as the two of us have done.**_

Just then Callen and Sam knocked at her door pillar, and as she looked up, she almost laughed and added a post scrip to her last thought, _**I truly forgot about Mr. Callen. If he lasts as long as we have, of which I have very serious doubts, the number of his aliases will probably be more than the two of ours combined.**_

"I thought that you two were supposed to be meeting with Mr. Getz. I want you...

"Relax, Hetty, our meeting with Nate is done, at least for the time being," Callen told her.

"Yeah, he said he would send you the paperwork as soon as he had it written up, but that we were free to go and were supposed to report to you," Sam added.

"Excellent. Then get over to the boat shed and wait for Mattias to arrive. Find out what is going on with him and why this is happening to him now. I'll have Eric patch the feed from there into ops."

"Okay, Hetty. Anything in particular you want us to look for?" Callen asked.

"I'm afraid that Branston Cole's little black book of spies is trying to bite us in the ass ...again."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Callen and Sam only had to wait about fifteen minutes before Kensi and Deeks brought Mattias into the boat shed. As they came in, Callen stuck his head out the door, looking to see if there was anyone following them. "Are you sure you weren't followed, he asked Deeks?"

"You know how Kensi drives, Few people can follow her normally, and when she is sure that she doesn't want to have someone on her tail...", he thought better of continuing that comment in words, but, as his thoughts continued and a great big smile came over his face, he just shook his head.

Kensi hit him in the shoulder, hard.

"What was that for? I didn't say anything wrong."

"But you were thinking it." she said as she glared at him.

'Oh, yeah, I was." An even bigger smile was on his face.

That gained him an even harder shot to his shoulder.

Callen walked off to where one of the hidden cameras was placed. Looking up, he called out to the tech in ops, "Eric, I want you to keep your eyes open to the cameras you have around the boat shed. If you see anything suspicious, any hint that they were followed, I want to know it, like yesterday."

"On it, Callen," was Eric's reply.

Callen turned back and saw that Kensi and Deeks had already put Mattias into the interrogation room. He entered with Sam, and the junior agents left, closing the door behind them.

"Why are we here, Mattias? I thought that all this ended a couple of years ago." Callen asked, standing over the old man.

"I have nothing to say to any of you. I will only talk to Herta."

"Herta?"

"Your boss, the Gartenzwerg [Garden Troll]"

"What do you want with Hetty? Didn't you understand what we meant with the message that we were sending you the last time we saw you?"

"I know, you told me you would take everything away. Well, there is nothing more to take away from me. That is why I need to talk to Herta."

Callen and Sam left the room and Hetty's voice came over the com. "I will be there in a few minutes, Mr Callen."

A short time later Hetty entered the boat shed. She said nothing to her agents, just went into the interrogation room and closed the door.

"I'm here, Mattias, what did you want to tell me."

"I need your protection, Herta."

"From whom?"

"From the Russians who disagree with the power set up in their country, from the CIA operating here, and from certain people in your own governmental agencies, that want to clean up all their loose ends."

"That is a formidable list, Mattias."

"I am one of those loose ends that they are trimming more and more until they come to the final cut and I will no longer be connected to this fabric of life."

"And do you know of any other loose ends that these intimidating groups want to trim from this fabric?"

"Yes, Herta. ...You."


	4. Russian Mobs and Local Hitmen

**Chapter 4: Russian Mobs and Local Hitmen**

**A/N: I saw "Deep Trouble II", and I was in the same ocean with a similar target, but that was as close as it got. I also watched 6x02 "Inelegant Heart" and now realize this story is so far from canon, it has to be rated AU. This chapter is an attempt to try to bring the two closer. I wrote this based on the two teaser photos for the episode "Third Choir" and the one of Callen where it looks like he is trying to match Deeks' hair styling in "Praesidium". Some of the dialogue from previous canon episodes are used here. Parts of this story are condensed from other stories that I have already posted. Thanks again to G, my Russian thesaurus. I hope you enjoy it.**

**A/N 2: Sorry this is being posted so late, I rewrote this chapter more times than I want to count, and as it is, I still am not perfectly happy with it. The plot bunnies were not kind to me these past couple of weeks. They gave me parts to other stories I am working on, a partial outline for a whole new story, but for this chapter, they all ran and hid. And so, before I fall too far behind the televised version, here it is: **

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

"Me, Matias? I can understand why some elements among the Russians would like to eliminate me from being an active player, but why would the CIA or any other US government agency want to stop me from doing my job?"

"You have no idea of how many enemies you have made, Herta, both among your foes and your 'so called' friends."

"You mentioned the CIA. We have worked hand in hand with them. Why would they be trying to get me?"

"Three words, Herta, 'White Ghost, Afghanistan'. They are still upset at how you intervened in their operation there,"

"How would you know about what I did there?"

"The CIA had farmed out the operation to my Russian friends. They turned it over to me. I was supposed to make sure that Jack Simon was eliminated. To help me accomplish this task, I made certain that the rumor of his being a traitor was circulated, so both sides would be looking to kill him. The legend of the 'White Ghost' was nothing more than my trying to save my own life and keep my Russian friends from coming after me."

Deeks had to hold Kensi back as she listened to Mattias' explanation. With all that she endured, the doubts about her former fiance, the failure to obey Granger's orders and administer the kill shot, making herself also look like a traitor by sneaking out of camp and allowing herself to be captured, undergoing torture at the hands of the Taliban, and the helpless feeling of having the team have to come halfway around the world to rescue her, she was ready to kill him with her bare hands.

"Easy, Kens, he is not worth it. Besides, even if we would drop his body through the trapdoor of the interrogation room, it would probably float, and even the fishes would refuse to dispose of it."

Kensi stopped struggling, but Deeks kept his arms around her, partially because he was concerned that something else would set her off, but mostly because he loved the close contact of her body next to his.

"Herta," you could hear how imploring his voice had become. "I need the same protection you gave to Jack Simon. Since it was my mission to 'eliminate that problem', and because I didn't, I became a new problem for them. Now they have decided to run a new operation, called 'Red Spook'. It is exactly like 'White Ghost' operation, only with a different person painted as the target, ...me."

"But you were not the one who saved the White Ghost from the Taliban. It was the team that I had sent in to rescue my agent that took him from the Taliban's control. That was never the main mission, it was only incidental to what they were charged to do."

"If only your agent could shoot straight, Herta, all of this could have been avoided. Are you sure you sent the best to do the job?"

Kensi started to struggle with Deeks again, wanting to go in and show Mattias just what type of agent she really was.

"Mattias, the agent I sent was the only one qualified to do the job. Rest assured, she did NOT miss. She is too well trained to miss. Her father was a Marine scout sniper who trained others in his craft. She honed her skills under his tutelage and the men who trained him."

"Are you sure, Herta? Can you truly be positive about that?"

"She is the preferred sniper for her team. My agents trust their lives to her skills. She has never let them down and they believe that she never will. Nor do I. They are confident that should she ever be unable to do the job, she would tell them, and they would just accept it."

"I could never have such faith in someone else."

"You have never worked with people as special as these."

"Are they special enough to protect me from the Russians and the CIA?"

"I can understand why the Russians are trying to eliminate you, but why would the CIA be joining in that project?"

"They were still upset with me over Branston Cole's book that you provided me. I gave it to the Russians who were posing as CIA agents. I don't know when the Agency finally found out that I had played them and was not going to give them the book. They said that I still owed them my freedom and that they would find some way for me to buy it back. When I told them that the micro dots the Russians were able to find were old and corrupted, they did not believe me."

"I know how persistent they can be. They must have worked it out the night that I provided you with the book. The lights at Langley burned well into the dawn as they tried to analyze how two Russian agents were able to pass themselves off as CIA agents. It was just so embarrassing for them."

"The first thing that they wanted me to do was to provide them with all the information that the Russians were getting from the micro dots. It took a while for my operatives to steal that information, and when it was given to me and I read it, I couldn't believe what it contained. This was supposed to be a little black book on Staatsseccherheit (East German Secret Police) operatives, as well as foreign agents from numerous countries, all the infamous. secret, operations of the KGB, the US and Israel including assassinations, intelligence gathering operations, counter-intelligence operatives, everything that the Virgin Mary herself would sell her soul to possess. Instead, it was nothing but specifications of equipment that was proposed shortly after the Cold War started, mostly Russian, some American, all of them projects that never did get off the ground because they were completely impractical or financially impossible to complete. There were two other micro dots that probably contain more of the same, but were totally unreadable, because after some sixty years, they had deteriorated with age. Who knows what was done with this book. Perhaps it was left open to those pages for too long a time and the natural light of the sun caused a reaction. Your guess is as good as mine as to what happened to it."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Back at ops, Nell and Eric were listening to the explanation that Mattias was giving Hetty about the micro dots and their deterioration. She giggled out loud, and Eric spun her chair around to give her a high five. Both of them remember the time constraints she was under as Hetty ordered her to take the micro dots off of a bookmark that they found in Renner's apartment and place them into a fake book that they could trade to the Russians to save Kensi, whom they had captured. How much depended on the simple little things that these two people did, and how often were they the reason that the agents came back home, safe and sound?

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

"You did not believe me when I told you that the book that everyone wanted never did exist."

"Herta, you should know that no one believes anything that anyone says in our business. What is true on one day becomes lies the next. All your friends become your enemies, and then suddenly, they are your friends and allies again. There are very, very few, if any, people that you can count on, and it seems that the older we get, the fewer those people become."

"I cannot tell you how wrong you are, Mattias. I may not always enjoy the veritable approval of my superiors, but the members of my team are much more than my friends and coworkers. Each of them are one of my children. We sometimes fight like family members regularly do, but I would give my life for each and every one of them if it came down to that, and I am certain that they would do the same for me, because they have already offered to do it, more than once."

"I know about your team members, Herta. They had their own last visit with me after I saw you that last time, and gave me a warning to leave you alone, totally, or I would have to deal with all of them. They are indeed a formidable group, and I understand why you have such confidence in them. It is just that I don't know if they will be able to stand up to the combined power of the Russian искоренить (iskornit') cartel."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Callen immediately called out, "Nell, Eric, everything that you can find on the Iskorenit cartel. I mean everything, and I need it now."

"We're already on it," Nell told him, as both of them started typing furiously on their computer keyboards.

Sam looked at him with worry all over his face, "G, what's wrong – what's got you so worked up?"

"That name, Sam, 'Iskorenit', in Russian it means 'eradication'. I've heard some rumors of a new player on the block in Russia and Eastern Europe. If this is the one they meant, we are in for a whole lot of trouble."

"Why, what's the problem with this cartel that makes them different from any of the others we have faced?"

"They play by their own rules, and those rules keep changing all the time."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Hetty seemed unperturbed at this. Instead she asked Mattias, "This is the Russian group that you have associated yourself with?"

"I didn't seek them; they found me and told me what they wanted me to do."

"You could have come to us then."

"I had too much to lose then."

"And how much do you have right now?"

"Nothing. They took it all. I went into hiding with my wife, Marlis, fearing the vengance they wanted to extract from me. They waited and gave me a new mission. While I was trying to accomplish that for them, they uncovered her sanctuary. I honestly thought I had found a good enough way to place Marlis into hiding, but they surprised her one afternoon, and made a DVD of them torturing her before she was executed. They made sure that I received that warning. I tried even harder to find a safe house for Elli, but they found her too. They had promised me that they would not hurt her. But they are the new type of power we deal with in the world today. You trust their word, and you are a fool. Elli wanted to trust them, and look what that got her. That is why I come to you. I am out of options. I have no more friends. I am forced to seek help from my enemies."

"And just why should I consider helping you? In all the time we have plied our trade, you have never done me any favors. If I remember correctly, it was mostly my sharing the intelligence and activity that I developed with you, rather than the other way around."

"Self-preservation, Herta. They are just as angry with your sending your team into Afghanistan to rescue the White Ghost as they were with me for not killing him. They will start to come after you, or the members of your team, to let you know of their displeasure."

"You are sure of that, Mattias?"

"The information is reliable. It was passed along to me through the same channels that told me they were after Marlis and Elli. You know what Iskorenit did to them. They can do the same to you."

"Many others have tried, and as you can see, I am still here."

"And that is why I have come to you, Herta. Everyone else thinks they are invincible. It's only us old war horses, who worry about the future and know how easily it can be terminated, we are the ones that may survive. And the older we get, the less likely that survival becomes."

"Very well, Mattias, we will try and find a safe house for you, until we find you a new life. But you do understand that there will be a price for it."

"Any price will be less than the one Iskorenit wants to impose."

Hetty looked up, and started to set the plan in motion. "Mr. Beale, would you please contact Director Vance and let him know that I need to speak with him later today. Then contact the Special Agent in Charge, I think it is Malcolm Page, in the Protective Operations Field Office at the Washington Navy Yard. Please tell him that I may need a team sent here for protective duty and validation of the threat potential of the Iskorenit cartel."

Eric's disembodied voice came back over the speaker, "On it, Hetty. Things should be all set up for you by the time you get back to ops."

I also want you to continue your surveillance of the boat yard. Ms. Blye and Detective Deeks will you escort Mattias to the living quarters upstairs. The two of you will stay here with him and provide protection for him until I can get some other agents here to take over. Mr. Callen, Mr. Hanna, I will meet you in ops shortly."

"Herta, my weapon?" Mattias asked, worried that he would not be able to defend himself.

"All in good time, Mattias." was Hetty's answer, even though she knew it was not the one he wanted.

Kensi and Deeks went into the interrogation room and led Mattias upstairs. The others went to their vehicles to go back to ops.

Later that day four agents from the San Diego office arrived at the boat shed to take over protective duties. Hetty called Lieutenant Bates and asked if they could use an LAPD safe house for a few days, not knowing if any of the NCIS ones were compromised. Together with two other agents from NCIS's LA team two, the protective detail waited to hand over Mattias to the Washington POFO team.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Callen was getting ready for the undercover operation that was postponed when Mattias showed up. He was supposed to try to get information on the illegal activities of Raphael Cruz, who, though he was an inmate at the California State Prison for Los Angeles County in Lancaster, was still one of the crime lords for the city of Los Angeles. There were a couple of other inmates at that facility that Callen and his team helped take down, but he hoped that the facial hair and longer locks he had grown would help disguise him. Sam would continue to have his back since he was posing as one of the state prison guards. They would be aboard the prison transfer bus the following afternoon.

When Hetty informed Director Vance about Mattias and his message to her, he gave her a different message that sounded just as foreboding. The Department of Justice was initiating an investigation into the Office of Special Projects and how she ran things there. Evidently the person or persons who initiated the first witch hunt through the Joint Defense Committee was not satisfied that Hetty was not crucified, her office in LA shut down, and her primary team disbanded. She was to fly to Washington the following day to answer the questions the DoJ had in regard to her operations.

Two agents from Protective Operations flew in early that evening. They wanted to bundle Mattias up and move him out as quickly as possible, by car to the military airport at Naval Air Station Point Magu and from there to an undisclosed location. Hetty had him brought to OSP by agents Jamie Cobb and Shaun Clark, who would go back to their normal duties out of the secondary ops near the rear of the building. Before he left, Hetty wished him a good life, since she knew she probably would never see him again. She gave him back his weapon, and asked if he needed anything else.

"It would be nice, Herta, if you would give me a full magazine for my pistol, right now the only thing I could do with it is throw it at someone, and I doubt if that would stop anyone."

"I may be old, Mattias, but I am not stupid. I no longer have any control over your fate. It is up to these agents to decide if you get any ammunition for your pistol, or even if your weapon remains your own. They will care for you from now on, and you will take your orders from them. Good bye, Mattias." She looked at him intently, as if to fix his facial features permanently in her memory. Then she went to her office to gather the files and folders that she would need to defend herself at the DOJ investigation.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

The following morning brought great changes to the Office of Special Projects. Hetty was off to Washington again, and Granger was sitting behind the desk that she normally occupied. The Assistant Director was told that Raphael Cruz had been rushed to the prison hospital in the middle of the night and had an emergency appendectomy. Since he would be given time to heal and was not going to be released back into the general prison population for a week to ten days, the undercover mission of Callen and Sam was again postponed.

Shortly before noon, Eric whistled them all up to Ops. It seemed a little strange seeing Granger up there in place of Hetty, but Callen turned to Eric and asked, "What have you got for us?"

"This was passed along to us from the LAPD. They got a call about a murder this morning from an anonymous caller on a pay phone."

"A pay phone? Where can you find a pay phone these days? And who has the change to use one?" Sam wanted to know.

"Better yet, why has the LAPD passed it on to us?" Deeks was wondering.

Nell put up a picture on the plasma as Eric continued, "The victim was Brian Bel, a boy genius, who had hacked into the Pentagon from his school library, and did cyber security work for them."

"Any idea what he was working on?" Sam asked.

Eric resumed the briefing, "I called in a favor from one of my friends working in the Navy Cyber Command program in San Diego. Technically Bel was attached to Tenth Fleet out of US Fleet Cyer Command at Fort Meeade, Maryland, but they have units throughout the world keeping track on intelligence, cyber warfare, and information management. He said that Bel's death would get everyone worried, because he was trying to work his way into the on-line black markets."

"You mean the 'Amazon for terrorists,' where you can buy anything and everything, a clip of ammunition to a hit on a world leader?" Deeks asked.

"Yup, and apparently he had zeroed in on one particular group, Chauvenet. He must have gotten too close and they had him eliminated." Eric concluded.

"Okay, Eric, you and Nell work your magic on internet links to Chauvenet. Kensi, you and Deeks go over to Naval Base Ventura County and talk to the base commander to see if he knows anything about this. Sam and I will go and check out the crime scene."

"Sent the address to your phone already, Callen." Nell assured him.

"Anyone finds out anything, we'll meet back here." Callen had already started out the doors of ops, and everyone else started working on their assignments.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Arriving at the crime scene, Sam and Callen found no computer equipment at all. There was evidence in the dust patterns and fade marks on the desk and the table that monitors, keyboards, and other components were there once, but now all that was left was a bunch of cut and unplugged wires. With nothing else to find there, they went back to the mission.

Deeks & Kensi talked to the base commander and were referred to a chief petty officer Morris Fowler, the military liaison officer in charge of the cyber command program at the base. He was surprised to find out that Brian Bel had been murdered, because he was not working on anything that had a high security status. He confirmed that the scope of Brian's work was trying to find out more about the group Chauvenet, how they were set up and who was in charge of it. He did have several photos of the murdered man and the computers he built from scratch. The two junior agents took the pictures with them and returned to OSP. There Eric sent the photos to the LAPD with a request to circulate them among the pawn shops, to see if they could capture the person who did this crime.

It was the wonder twins that found the key to this case. Eric first tried to find some cameras that showed anyone breaking into the house. All he found was a white van that had been parked on the street. Nell was working on the Chauvenet web site. There she found the picture of Brian Bel after he was murdered as proof of the kill. She also found the picture of the killer. Of course there was only a code to identify him, no name was provided. Eric ran his picture through all the photo recognition programs, they still had nothing.

Eric also hacked the Chauvenet e-mail files and found that Brian had figured out who created the site and was blackmailing him. Rather than keep paying Brian, Chauvenet's creator, Papa Legba, put out a contract on him, and the killer claimed his prize.

Since all of this was done on-line, Deeks and Kensi were sent to the morgue to add a little makeup to Brian's face to remove the pallor, and one of Deeks' shirts to cover up the incisions, and take a selfie and post it to the Chauvenet website, claiming the killer botched the job. When the killer went back to finish the job, Sam and Callen were waiting for him as he wiggled through the doggie door to again gain access to Brian's house.

He was taken down for Brian's murder, but they still didn't know who Papa Legba was. But Eric once again proved that he is the king of the keyboards and the caliph of cyber space, when he figured out who Papa Legba was, by matching e-mail accounts, website postings, phone and banking records. From there it was easy for the team to take down Papa Legba and put his site out of business.

While Eric and Nell were going through the Chauvenet files, they found that someone paid a quarter of a million dollars to find the address of one Henrietta Lange. The proof was posted here, one of Hetty's houses was pictured along with the address. Were her other homes listed in some other files? Had the team members been targeted also, listing their homes and addresses in still other files? With all the redundancy that Hetty used to hide her identity and homes that she owned, how could this have happened? Maybe there was some truthful reason why, as Callen once jokingly said to Sam, "Hetty sleeps every night in a different one of her homes."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

**Somewhere in Idaho**

Mattias went to get the restroom key from the attendant at this gas station on the edge of nowhere. Why the restrooms were even locked, he had no idea, besides the two agents, the attendant, and himself, there were no other human beings within fifty miles of the place. Once he entered and relocked the door, he pulled out the little burn phone that was clandestinely slipped into his pocket before he left the OSP building in Los Angeles. Seeing that he had a text message, he opened it and read the two words, "THA NO". Mattias knew it would come down to this. He went back into the store to return the key to the attendant and purchased three cold drinks. From a pocket inside his jacket, he pulled a small capsule, and breaking it open, dropped half of the tasteless powder into each of two of the bottles. Offering one of the doctored bottles to each of the NCIS agents, he engaged them in small talk until they both dropped over dead on the far side of the car. Matias picked up one of their guns, forced the attendant outside before he shot the man. He quickly loaded all three bodies into the trunk of the car, and then turned the car around and drove off the way they came. There was a side road about seventy-five miles back where he could dump the bodies and they wouldn't be seen from the road. Since no one would be looking for him for at least another two days, he could get back to Los Angeles and steal a replacement car there. He just wished that he would have had one more day before he had to put this part of his plan into effect.


	5. Invasions and Deceptions

**Chapter 5: Invasions and Deceptions**

**A/N: I have watched season 6 episodes 1- 5 and now realize this story is so far from canon, it has to be rated AU. This chapter is my attempt to try to bring the two universes somewhat closer. Originally, this was based on the two teaser photos for the episode "Third Choir" and the one of hairy headed Callen in "Inelegant Heart". Some of the dialogue from canon episodes are used here. Parts of this story are condensed from other stories that I have already posted. Thanks again to G, my Russian thesaurus. I hope you enjoy it.**

**A/N 2: Sorry this is being posted so late, I rewrote this chapter more times than I want to count, and as it is, I still am not perfectly happy with it. The plot bunnies were not kind to me these past couple of weeks. They gave me parts to other stories I am working on, a partial outline for a whole new story, but for this chapter, they all ran and hid. It grew far too long, so I split the chapter up into two parts, and then found it had to be reworked, but it was easier to deal with. And so, before I fall too far behind the televised version, here it is: **

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

**Los Angeles, California**

Eric whistled the team up to ops.

"What have you got for us now, Eric?" Callen asked the young tech operator when everyone was assembled there.

"We're being invaded."

"What are you talking about? Has there been a break in? Has OSP been compromised?" Callen asked.

"That," Eric said, and put up the picture of their front door. Special Congressional Investigator Michael Thomas had tried to do a backdoor attack on Hetty and her team by ordering a forensic audit of the NCIS facility and all the employees working there. Several members of the Department of Justice task force were at their front door at this early hour, with their wheeled suitcases to pack away the files and other information they expected to find. In front of the group was a woman who was waving her badge around, so the cameras she knew were there could see it, as she demanded entrance for the group.

"What'll we do?" Eric asked.

"Just leave them. If nobody buzzes them in, they will get tired of waiting." Callen offered.

"Too late," Eric replied, as the door opened and they all entered the building.

Granger had come out of Hetty's office and met with the leader of the group.

"I am Chief Investigator Ava Wallace. My team and I are members of a Department of Justice task force appointed by Special Congressional Investigator Michael Thomas to do a forensic audit on this department of NCIS and the people at this facility. We have subpoena and warrant powers to compel your people to testify and produce documents. We will need a place to set up our computers, deal with our paperwork, and conduct interviews. You are required to provide all of this for us. Do I make myself clear?"

Granger didn't particularly like the fact that this woman came in with her attitude and started ordering him to provide everything that she wanted. He went back to his office and picked up the phone. Calling up to ops, he asked Nell to come down to work with this woman.

"Jones, this woman needs space for her team to spread out their stuff and work. Where would you suggest she go."

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow, as if to ask him if he really wanted her to answer that question. "I guess that the gym would be about the only place that would have enough room for them. I could get maintenance to set up a bunch of tables and bring in enough chairs for them to spread things out."

"And what about interview areas?" Wallace asked.

"There are several empty offices that you could use, ma'am. I will make sure that maintenance sets them up for you."

"Is there anything else you want right now or need?" Granger asked.

"I don't think so. That will work for us for the moment."

"We will have some temporary phones installed. If you need something from me all you have to do is use the code 9-414 and that will get me up in ops."

"I suppose I could just go up there and ask." Wallace offered.

"We prefer that you just call. The fewer times the doors open and close the easier it is on the air conditioning that cools all the mainframe computer systems up there."

"That sounds logical. How soon do you think you can get things set up here?" the DoJ agent asked.

"Give us a couple of hours, and you should be up and running." Nell assured her. She then looked at Granger and said, "I'll go up and set things up through my work station."

She hurried up to ops and informed the team what was going on with Wallace and her team. Callen looked at her and asked, "I really hate to ask this of you and Eric, but could you two stay here and hold down the fort? The rest of us will go and set up our base of operations at the boat shed. You can still channel all the information that we need over there, right?"

The two techs looked at each other and then nodded. Eric told Callen "You will have to switch the flat screen TV in the living quarters over to the operations command mode. It won't be as good as the plasma, but it is as good as you need right now."

Callen looked at Eric and Nell and said, "Thanks guys. I owe you big time." He then turned to the team and said, "Let's go out the back way so the DoJ people can't follow us, and meet up at the boat shed." With that, the four agents exited ops.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Later that afternoon, Nell received the dreaded phone call from DoJ Agent Wallace.

"Ops."

"Miss Jones? I was wondering if we could begin our interviews this afternoon. Could you have Agent Callen come by and we can get his out of the way?"

"I'm sorry, Agent Wallace, but Agent Callen is out in the field on a case right now, and is not available for an interview." Nell told her.

"What about Agent Hanna?"

"He is with Agent Callen, and also is unavailable right now."

"Then what about Agent Blye and Detective Deeks? Would either of them be available?"

"I'm sorry. Agent Blye is off interviewing witnesses for that case, and Detective Deeks has been called back to his duties at LAPD."

"Do you know when any of them will be available for interviews?"

"I'm sorry, I do not. But the next time I am in contact with them, I will tell them that you asked. Sorry, I have an incoming call from Director Vance for Assistant Director Granger. Goodbye." and then Nell hung up. She called Granger up to ops to take the call from the Director and left to give him the privacy he needed. When he was done, she returned to ops and placed a call to Hetty to give her the daily update that she required.

"Hello, Miss Jones. How are things back home?"

"A team from the Department of Justice is set up in the gym, doing a forensic audit. They wanted to interview members of the team, but Callen has them operating out of the boat shed right now. I don't know how long I can stall them from going over the files or grilling the agents. She did say that she has subpoena and warrant powers to compel us to testify and produce documents."

"My dear, far be it for me to tell you to interfere in a Department of Justice investigation. I do want to remind you, however, that the building is old, and was scheduled to be condemned at one time."

"I think I understand what you are saying, Hetty. Otherwise we're all good and there is nothing more to report."

"Very well, Miss Jones. I leave everything in your capable hands. Until tomorrow then."

"Goodbye, Hetty."

Nell went down into the basement and found the main power switch to the Mission. With a smile on her face she pulled it, plunging the whole building into darkness. Then she turned off all the areas of the building, except for the ops centers for all of the teams. She fired up the auxiliary generator, even though it was just for show. She turned on the main power switch to power up the ops centers.

When Nell came back up to the main floor, she found Agent Wallace looking for her.

"What happened? Why is the power down?"

"Well, you know that this is an older building, and it was damaged in the earthquake of '94. It could be that some of the older wiring did not show any outward damage when they were checking it then and finally decided to quit under the added load your machines have put on them." Nell answered.

"Well, you do have backup generators, don't you? Can they be used to power the building?"

"We have only one backup generator, and that is being used right now to run the computers in all the ops centers. We have constantly asked for more backup generators to be placed in our budget, but you know how the Washington bureaucrats are. Maybe if you would place an order, we could get some more installed to power the rest of the building. Perhaps they would listen to you more than they do to us?"

Eric had come down from ops to find Nell and tell her that things were back up and running. Listening to her conversation with Wallace, he couldn't believe how thick Nell was laying it on to the older woman. He had to quickly turn around and almost run back up to ops, barely letting the doors swish shut behind him before he broke out in laughter.

Since there was nothing more that she could do, Agent Wallace returned to the gym and gave her team the rest of the day off, sending them back to their hotel. Nell maintained her straight face and went back up to ops. Safely behind the closed doors, she looked at Eric, and both of them burst out laughing.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Eric pushed the button that sent out the call to everyone warning them about a major intrusion at one of Hetty's homes.

Sam rolled over to answer his buzzing cell, as Michelle complained, "It's only 5:00 in the morning. What could they possibly want with calling you in this early?"

"I have no idea, Chelle. Just gotta go and find out," he said as he pulled on his pants and grabbed his shirt, exiting their bedroom.

Nell was almost at the OSP when she got her call. Usually she got there just a few minutes after Eric did, but this morning she put everything she needed into her crock pot, so that her pot roast would be done and waiting for her when she got home.

Callen already had his two hours of sleep for the night and was working on his Chechen language tapes, as he read his latest on-line copy of Izvestia. He looked at the message and was immediately on his way.

Kensi wondered if it was her phone or Deeks' that was buzzing. She had tried sleeping, but again the nightmares of that cave in Afghanistan came to haunt her and drive all thoughts of rest completely out of her mind. This was the fourth night this week that she would get little or no sleep. She had called Deeks, and he immediately came over. After a couple minutes of argument, he allowed her to put in her Titanic DVD and they settled together on her couch to watch it. Both of them must have fallen asleep, because their limbs were all tangled up around each other. Deeks was groggy, wondering why she was moving around when it was so early in the morning. Both of them immediately woke up when they realized that both of their phones were calling them from slumber.

Granger got the call too, since he was the temporary operations manager. He looked over at the young blond woman laying in the bed next to him, his latest attempt to capture the magic that he once had with Anja, back in 1980 in East Berlin. Even though it was so long ago, he never forgave Hetty Lange for lying to him and telling him she would help get Anja to freedom, only to do nothing. The young woman's smile still haunted him after all these years, as he tired to recreate those days when he was so much in love. He was sure that this girl, Alyona, Elena, Irena, whatever her name was, had been provided to him by Mattias, probably with the aid of the Iskorenit cartel. She seemed awfully interested in the work he did, and even got close to pumping him for information. He let a few things supposedly slip, knowing that she would pass them on. He didn't want to destroy the NCIS unit here in Los Angeles, or provide any information that would label him a traitor, but he did want to destroy Hetty as completely as she had done to him. His bed partner did not matter to him that much anyway. There was none of the magic with her, and he felt that this might be the very last time he was with her. He didn't look back at all as he dressed and proceeded to grab his phone and head for the mission

When he arrived he went up to ops immediately. Granger looked at Eric and asked him, "Why did you call us in so early, Eric?"

"There's been a break in at Hetty's residence in Hollywood. The guard Hetty had there has been killed and they are still there prowling around so I sent Callen and Sam over to Dovecote to see if they can apprehend them, and Deeks and Kensi over to Ancora, over on Bethune, in Los Angeles, in case there is going to be a break in there.

"You got eyes on the intruders?" Granger asked

"Yes, sir. Hetty's got an elaborate security system in each of her houses. We can follow them through every room of the house. We made sure that almost every inch of the place is covered."

"One of them seems to have some sort of medical kit. It appears that they may be there more for an abduction than any thing else." Nell added .

"Has the team been notified of that?" Granger asked.

"As soon as we saw it, we sent it to their phones, along with the access codes so they can enter silently." Nell answered

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Sam and Callen arrived at Dovecote at the same time. Each of them knew how the other operated so well, that all Callen had to do was tell Sam, "Give me two" as he headed toward the back door. Sam waited the allotted time, then went to the front door and punched in access code, crouched down and entered with his gun drawn. "Federal agents, drop your weapons" he yelled out as he entered the house and immediately sought cover.

He heard Callen enter the back door, just before the fire fight started. In just a few moments, both intruders were dead. He was glad that they took the intruders out as quickly as possible, with very little collateral damage done to Hetty's residence or the possessions it contained. He would have hated to have the replacement costs come out of his paycheck, because with some of these items, it would be centuries before he would again be paid.

"Eric, I'm sending you the pictures of our two intruders. See if you can find out who they were and why they were here. Both of them had a small medical kit with a filled syringe and two vials of fluid. Have one of the techs meet me at the boat shed, and they can take it back to the lab to analyze it."

"Will run them through facial recognition. Get me the info on their car and I will also run that through Kaleidoscope to see where they have been. Kirstin will be waiting for you to get that sample over to the lab."

"Okay. We're coming in. Send anything you get over to the boat shed."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

When they were all back in the boat shed, Callen activated the flat screen and linked up with ops. "You got anything new for us, Eric?"

"The car is a rental. It was picked up at LAX three days ago." ID cards of both of the men were posted on the screen. "Both men are former East German operatives that worked both for their government and also on their own. They holed up in a motel near the airport and had only one visitor before they launched their intrusion on Hetty's house. That man is none other than..." A new NCIS ID card was added on the screen.

"Mattias Draeger, Son of a ..." Callen was nearly beside himself. "I thought that he was going into protection program somewhere in Podunk, USA. Get ahold of the Protective Operations Field Office in Washington. I wanna know what happened after they left here to go to some 'undisclosed location'. He evidently is not there, but came back here."

"Will do, Callen," Nell assured him.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

About two hours later Nell called back. "It's almost certain that they were there to try to abduct Hetty. Both of those medical kits had a syringe filled with a 0.1 mg dose of the synthetic opiod etorphine combined with acepromazine maleate to make sure it was non toxic for humans. The second vial is the human antidote, naloxone, used in case of accidental human exposure."

"I guess that Mattias did not take our warning to him about Hetty seriously. He will learn what it feels like to cross us." Callen said.

"About Mattias..." Nell said hesitantly. She really didn't want to give Callen the news that she had to deliver.

"What about him, Nell? What news do you have that I'm really not gonna like."

"I called Operations Manager Malcolm Page, in the Protective Operations Field Office in Washington, to ask if he was still in protective custody. They cannot get ahold of the two agents that were accompanying him. They failed to make their check ins all day yesterday, but nobody red flagged it, because of the low priority they set on the move. They should have been set up in Lewiston, Idaho, today, having flown into Coeur d'Alene, and driving from there. They were supposed to check in at a Motel in Moscow, Idaho, before doing the final drive to Lewiston. They never checked in."

So that bastard might be running around under the radar, and might be the one in charge of abducting Hetty?"

"Looks like it", Nell was forced to admit.

Callen swore, and furiously started typing on his computer.

"G, what are you planning to do?" Sam asked him.

"They want Hetty. Let's give them Hetty." Callen said to him with a smile on his face.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Later that afternoon, a limousine pulled up in front of Dovecote, Hetty's home in Hollywood. Callen and Sam got out and escorted the petite person in the back seat up to the door, where she punched in the access code. Once inside, the woman turned to the two field agents and asked, "Okay guys, where do you want me to go?" It was not Hetty, but Nell as a decoy, looking just like Hetty, dressed in a wig and a smart pants suit that Hetty would not have been ashamed to wear.

"Why don't you go upstairs to the bedroom. That's where Hetty would have gone. Sam is going to stay downstairs here and act as your bodyguard. I'm gonna leave and drop off the limo and pick up the Challenger, this way if anyone has eyes on the place, maybe it will lure them out." Callen laid out their planned operation.

Not more than ten minutes after Callen left, the new hit team made their appearance. Sam counted at least six guys that were coming for their fake Hetty. Warning both Callen and Nell that they were coming in, he took up a defensive position in the house and took out the first one that came through the door. He heard the glass of the back door break, and wondered if he was going to be caught in the crossfire. When he wasn't attacked from behind, he figured that guy went up the stairs to take care of Nell.

"Nell, one's coming up," he yelled over the com. Nell didn't reply, and Sam could only hope that she would again trust the training she received and be able to deal with him.

Callen entered through the back door and joined Sam in defending the main floor. Both men were a little worried about Nell upstairs. They decided to join forces with her and fought their way to the stairway.

Nell's cell rang and she answered it. "Little busy here, Hetty. We are under attack here at Dovecote."

"Listen carefully, Miss Jones, ..." Hetty continued to give her some specific instructions on what they should do.

Leaving Sam to cover the stairway, Callen went and entered the master bedroom, preparing himself for the worst. The closed adjoining bathroom door looked like someone sprayed it with a burst from an automatic weapon. He slowly opened the door, forcing it when it was blocked by the male body lying on the floor. "Nell, it's me." he said, and then saw her, sitting on the floor in the corner, her gun trained on him, with a look on her face that Callen had never seen there before, fear, determination, relief. He offered her his hand to help her up to a standing position. "Come on, we've got to fight our way out of here," he told her. They stepped over the dead intruder and joined Sam out in the hallway.

Nell looked up and down the hallway and then she headed off toward one end. "Guys, this way."

Sam looked at where she was going, "Nell, that's a dead end." he told her.

"No, Hetty called and told me about this." she said as she started pulling on a suit of armor at the end of the hall. There was a small click and then one edge swung away, revealing the secret stairway behind it.

Nell led the way down the stairs and Sam shut the secret door behind him. "Of course Hetty would have a secret passageway in her house. Why didn't I realize that. I just wish that she hadn't built it for people who were her size and not mine." the big man said as he bumped his head on the ceiling once again.

"You could go back and use the regular stairway, big guy." Callen said.

Sam just growled at him as he hit his head one more time on the low ceiling clearance.

They were waiting for the two men left of the attack team who came through the front door. "Federal Agents, Drop the weapons." With three agents' guns trained on them, the two men complied and were taken into custody.

Sam and Callen dropped Nell off at the limousine, so she could drive it back, and then continued with their two prisoners over to the boat shed. They had sent the pictures of the four dead intruders in to Eric so he could run them through his facial recognition program. From piecing things together, they determined that five of the gunmen were just local muscle, probably hired just for this one job. But the sixth member of the hit team, the one that Nell had killed, was Russian, and was reportedly a member of the Iskorenit cartel. When Callen, heard that, he slammed both his fists down on the interrogation table, got up and walked out the door. Sam put his hand on Callen's shoulder, but he just shook it off. Not saying a word to anyone, he left the boat shed, got into his car and drove off.

Sam immediately called Eric. "Keep Callen under GPS surveillance, Eric. I'm afraid he is gonna go off the reservation."

"Sorry to tell you this, Sam, but he has already disabled the GPS tracker on his car and his phone. Callen has gone 'lone wolf' on us again."


	6. Early Withdrawal

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

****Chapter 6: Early Withdrawal****

**A/N:****** Some of the dialogue from previous canon episodes are used here. Parts of this story are condensed from other stories that I have already posted. Thanks again to G, my Russian thesaurus. I hope you enjoy it.****

****A/N 2: It's hard to believe that the first quarter of Season 6 has already been broadcast. I originally wanted this story to be about 3 chapters long and to have it done before the episode 6x04 "The 3rd Choir" aired. Well, the best laid plans of mice and men do not take any plot bunnies into consideration. I split my original chapter 5 up into two parts and found it had to be reworked, but was easier to deal with. That also meant that this chapter had to be reworked eextensively too. Anyway, here it is...better late than never.****

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Callen drove to one of the small parks that dotted the city. He sat there in his car, watching the children play on the swings and the slides, with no cares in the world. Seeing them enjoy their childhood years, something that he never experienced, always seemed to calm him down. Perhaps it was because they were the ones for whom he really did what he did. He and the rest of the people like him, no longer had their innocence to enjoy right now nor the prospect of a "happy ever after" in the future. But these children were a different story. A new and better life could be worked out for them if enough of the evil elements that tried to destroy them were removed permanently. Their parents could only protect them so far. Beyond that, people like those who worked at OSP were needed to extend that range of protection beyond the immediate family.

This is what made him so extremely angry with what had gone on just a few hours before. Someone had nearly killed Nell, thinking she was Hetty. It pained him greatly to have to place the young analyst in that great amount of danger. But it truly angered him that someone was trying to capture or kill their operations manager, the woman that Callen more and more looked to as the mother he never had.

In his mind, he had already gone through all the options that were available to him as a federal agent. The only solution that he was able to come up with was to eliminate Mattias Draeger, not put him in a witness protection program, not even to lock him up to get all his secrets, but to take him out completely. If Hetty would allow it, Callen even wanted to mount Mattias' head on one of her warrior poles to warn others of his kind not to mess with the little "Black Widow", because she and her family would hunt them down and they, too, would be devoured.

But if he wanted to eliminate Mattias Draeger, he would have to find him first. The Chauvenet website was no longer available for him to order a hit for hire. He would have to do it the old fashioned way, pound the streets and get the word out that G. Callen was willing to pay for information leading to the capture or confirmed death of Mattias Draeger.

The next question was, how much was he willing to pay for this? He had no idea of how much money he had in his various accounts, and how much he had secretly stashed away. He started up his car and drove over to a nearby mall and bought himself a burn phone. While sitting in the food court, after eating a double double with fries and onion rings, he placed several calls to various banks in which he had accounts. When he got the totals, he figured that he had about $21,000.00 in all those accounts. It was a start, but by far, that was not enough for the job he needed.

He knew that Eric would be tracking his bank accounts to find out his location, so he sent a text message to Nell, asking for her help. He slowly walked over to his car, then checked for Nell's response. Nothing. He knew she should still be up at ops and not out in the field, because he hadn't debriefed her yet on what had happened at Hetty's house. He tried calling her personal cell, but it just went over to voice mail, "This is Nell, leave a message." Every fifteen minutes he placed another call, and every time it went over to voice mail.

After an hour of trying to get her, Callen was starting to worry about their little analyst. He was close to her apartment, and decided to swing by her place to see if she was there. Callen pulled through the parking lot and saw that her red Mini Cooper was parked there. Pulling into one of the visitor parking slots, the senior agent got out of his car, entered the building, and went to her door. "Nell, are you there?" he asked as he knocked, but silence was all that greeted him. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he once again dialed her number. Callen could hear the phone ringing inside her apartment, but one more time it went to voice mail. "I know that you're in there, Nell. It's me, Callen. Won't you please let me in?" but she still would not answer. After another five minutes of waiting there with no response from her, Callen went back to his car and made his way back to the boat shed. Since he could not enlist Nell to help him, he knew that he would have to contact Eric for help and come back onto the reservation.

On his way back, he put in a call to ops, but got Kirstin Chambers instead of Eric.

"Hi, Kirstin, it's Callen. I take it that Nell called in sick that you are filling in for her?"

"I don't know, Callen. Assistant Director Granger has had me over on this side today, but he didn't say where Nell was or what she was doing." The young woman had cleared one of her screens and had typed this message, "Callen's on the line." and pointed it toward Eric as she threw a pencil at him to gain his attention. "I can switch you over to Eric, if you want."

"I suppose he is really upset with me, for what I did today, but, yeah, let me talk to him."

"Callen," the senior tech was almost shouting over the phone, "where are you? Are you all right? We all have been worried about you."

"Eric, calm down. I'm on my way back to the boat shed. I haven't been hurt, shot, knifed, blown up, or anything else, so you can tell Sam he doesn't have to worry about me. What's going on with Nell? I am really worried about her, now."

"I don't know, Callen. She drove the limo back here and checked it and her wardrobe in. Then she just got into her car and left, without saying a word to anyone. I have tried to contact her several times, but she just lets her phone go over to voice mail without picking up at all. Her GPS trackers on her car and phone say that she is over at her apartment, but beyond that, I have no idea."

"Yeah, I know. I've tried too and got the same results. She had a rough day today, Eric. One of those hit men made it all the way upstairs, and found Nell in the bathroom of the master suite. I don't know if he hesitated at seeing Hetty's clothes and hair on a much younger woman, or what, but Nell was able to trust her training again and shoot him. He fell down dead in front of her, and ended up blocking the door."

"Shit," Eric exclaimed. "This is her first kill, isn't it."

"Yeah," Callen confirmed. "She must be going through a hell of a time right now, and the worst part about it is that she is trying to do it all on her own. You need to get in touch with Nate Getz, Eric. Tell him the circumstances of the shoot, and ask him, for me, if he will come back and work with Nell. I know they have some history between them. I don't want to lose Nell from the team over something like this."

"Got it. Will do what I can to make that happen for her. Is there anything else you need?"

"Yeah, Eric. I need a work order for Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, authorizing me to open up a crypt in the mausoleum and placing a coffin into it, and I need a panel truck for this evening."

"I'd ask you what for, but I really don't think I wanna know. Plausible deniability and all that stuff."

"Probably the best route to take, Eric. Can you do it?"

"Ask me to do something hard, Callen. I'll fax the work order over to the boat shed. The white Chevy panel truck is now reserved for you. You'll have to sign it in and out."

"Thanks, Eric.**" **

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Late that evening found Callen on the service drive of the Rose Hills Memorial Park. He had shown his work order to the guard at the gate, who just waved him through so he could get back to the television program he was watching in the guard house. Callen drove near one of the sections of outdoor mausoleums, looking for the crypt of Клара Ничтожество (Klara Nictozhyesvo) Clara Nobody or Clara the nonentity, an obvious pretense to the fact that his mother Clara's body was not in there. When he located the crypt, he ran his knife over the seal on each of the sides, took off the little star shaped plugs and inserted the special tool to unlock the faceplate. It opened with a slight pop, and Callen carefully set it aside for later reuse.

Using his little flashlight, he looked into the crypt to see if it still contained what he had placed in there almost a year ago. He grabbed the oversized equipment bag, squeezed it to feel the shape of the contents, then pulled it out. Scraping the old sealant off the faceplate, he took a tube of new black latex sealant and applied it to the edges, replaced the faceplate over the opening, locked the faceplate to the mausoleum wall once more, and inserted the plugs to hide the holes. He got into the truck with the equipment bag, and drove back to the Mission to trade off the truck for his Mercedes. When he returned to the boat shed, he threw the big equipment bag into his locker, where it joined a smaller gym bag. He took a padlock out of his pocket and secured the locker before he crashed on the couch from exhaustion.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

When Sam came in the next morning and went to his locker, he noticed the padlock on Callen's. He took one of his extra towels and went to look for his partner. Seeing him on the couch, he threw the towel at his head. As Callen woke with a start, Sam started to tear into him.

"Damn it, G. Now you don't trust me to look in your locker? I am your partner. I had your back. I trusted you to have mine. If you can't trust me with your stuff, how can you trust me with your life? What you got in there that you don't want me to see? Is Deeks right. Did you blow off Joelle for a blow up doll? Is that what you got under lock and key in your locker? Is this the end of our bromance?" Sam no longer could keep up the stern look on his face and the mock anger in his voice, and broke out in a deep belly laugh.

Callen ran his hand through his hair as he tried to wake up completely. "Geez, Sam. For a moment I actually thought you might be serious. No. I trust you and the other members of the team. I just didn't know what to do with the 'stuff' as you call it. I didn't want any of it walking away if we had to interrogate anyone here."

"So what have you got in the locker, G?'

"I'll show you."

Callen went over to the locker and dug the key out of his pocket. He opened the door, took out the two bags, and carried them into one of the interrogation rooms. He set the larger one on the floor, and zipped open the smaller one, spilling a large amount of money onto the table.

"Ah... G? Where did you get all this money?"

"I cleaned out all my bank accounts this afternoon . That's everything I had in my savings accounts."

"And just what do you think that you are going to do with it?"

"The same thing that the Iskorenit cartel did to find out where Hetty lived. I'm gonna post a bounty for some information."

"What sort of information?"

"The whereabouts of Mattias Draeger, wherever he is, alive or confirmation of his death."

"This ain't gonna work, G."

"Why not?"

"First of all, the Chauvenet website is no longer up and running, so it is not gonna be easy to find him. Secondly, that ain't gonna be enough money to put a price on his head."

"You know, Sam, you're right. We are gonna have to get a whole lot of people looking for him to be sure of finding him and that's gonna take a lot of work on our part. I also agree with you that this is not enough money to find out where Mattias is located. But maybe this is..." Callen picked up the oversized equipment bag and unzipped it, pouring out its contents on top of the money already on the table.

Kensi and Deeks came in just as Callen was pouring out all the money the other bag contained.

Deeks greeted him sarcastically, "Glad to see you are back on the reservation, Callen. Just how much of it have you sold to get this little nest egg of yours?"

"Where did you get all that?" Kensi wanted to know. "You didn't rob a bank, did you?"

"Nope. It's all the extra from my undercover missions."

"Extra, what do you mean, extra. I never got any extra money when I went undercover. Did you ever get any extra money, Kens" Deeks asked.

"I didn't even know there was something like extra money." she answered her partner.

"All right, let me explain it to you," Callen said to the three of them. "Whenever any of us go out on an undercover mission, we are usually provided with a credit card authorized to a certain amount, or a certain amount of money, as part of our cover. And as soon as the mission is over, we are supposed to return those funds back to the issuing person or agency, correct?"

"Well, that is the way it is supposed to work. You are responsible for the funds and have to account for the amount given to you." Sam admitted.

"So, what happens if you come back with more money than you left with?" Callen asked. "I had a big argument with Hetty the first time that it happened to me. She wanted to charge me for all of the equipment and clothing I had damaged and take it out of my salary."

"So what's new with that? You are kinda hard on the cars that she provides you." Sam snickered.

"But I came back with more money than she gave me to start the mission. I argued with her that all the extra money should be credited to me as an offset on what she claimed I owed. She told me that she could not do that, because what monies she received from me was a gift that I was giving to NCIS. I didn't have to turn that money in, because it was not part of the money I signed out on. So, from that day on, I figured that if Hetty looked upon these monies as mine to give to her as a gift, if I chose not to give it away, it would be mine to keep. So I do."

"I see two things wrong with that, partner. Sam said. "First of all, you didn't get this much cash by just ending up a few dollars in the black on your undercover missions, and secondly, if Hetty ever finds out what you are doing, she's gonna make you pay the taxes on all that and then turn it all over to her, as what you owe her, not a gift, so you don't even get a charitable deduction out of it."

"Hate to disappoint you, Sam, but the taxes on most of this money has already been paid. You're right, though, most of this money was not from squeezing out a profit on the mission monies that Hetty gave me. In fact, Hetty could not even claim ownership of most of this money. Some of this money is the salary I earned when I was deeply embedded in a couple of the undercover missions with the cartels. If anyone is entitled to the rest of the funds, it would be the CIA. Remember those two last times that I was loaned out to them for their undercover missions in Europe? In both cases, I was to be a jet setter, one with a penchant for gambling. The CIA gave me a state of $50,000.00 each time and they expected me to gamble it away and confirm my backstopped identity. They were extremely surprised when, at the end of both missions, I returned the complete amount they originally handed over to me. They had expected me to lose most of the money, and had already written it off as part of the cost of the operation. They never did bother to ask me if I had any winnings, and I wasn't gonna tell them that I had nearly doubled my original stake each time on those two missions. All the extra I won is part of the money on the table here."

"Swe-e-e-et" was Deeks' reply. "The next time you go out gambling, can I come with you?"

Kensi gave her partner an icy stare, then asked Callen, "So, how much do you think is here?'

Callen said, "I have no idea. I never stopped to count it, but it should be at least $200,000.00."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

"Eric, I want some pictures of Mattias with the word 'Reward' posted over the bottom. I want 8x10s, I want post card size, and I want business card size. I need at least a thousand of each. I want so many eyes out looking for him that there will be no place for him to hide."

"Okay, Callen. How much reward are you offering?"

"Two hundred, thirty thousand."

"Okay, do you want the amount printed on the picture too?"

"No, but I want it all tied to my phone. Do we have a new burn phone in the office that I can use for just this purpose?"

"Yeah, we have a couple of them. I will set one out for you and make sure that number is listed on the back of the wanted poster."

"Thanks, Eric. How soon do you think those will be ready?"

"Give me an hour and you should be set to go."

"Okay. I'll stop by and pick them up in about an hour"

"Ah... Callen? Have you heard anything from Nell?"

"No. Has nobody talked to her today?"

"Not as far as I can tell."

"Put in a call for Nate to see if he can get in touch with her."

"Granger already did."

"We'll have to wait and see what he says."

"Okay, Callen, see you in about an hour."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Callen came into the Mission building to pick up his posters. On the way up to ops, he met Granger coming down the steps with one of the 8x10s in his hand.

"Callen, what is the meaning of this?"

"We're gonna get Mattias, any way we can."

"You know that I damn sure cannot authorize a reward for information about him."

"I'm not asking you, Granger. I am putting up the reward. Every last cent. Mattias is a threat to us, to Hetty, and I am not gonna stand around and let him run the streets and do whatever he wants. Not to Hetty, not to my team."

"You sound as if you are making this personal."

"Of course it's personal. We are family here. You mess with one of us and you have all of us coming to help. That's what families are all about."

"You know that I can order you off this case?"

"I suppose you can. But you also know what I will do, and what I think the whole team will do if we are ordered off."

"Unfortunately, I do, and this seems to be the only way to make sure you don't make a wrong move. Officially, I have no knowledge of what you are doing. Unofficially, I hope you find him."

"Oh, we'll do that. You don't have to worry about that."

Callen dropped off most of the wanted fliers at the boat shed and told Kensi and Deeks to pick some up and pass them out to their contacts. He did warn Deeks not to let the LAPD get wind of the fact that he was offering a reward for this information, because he knew that they took a dim view of that.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

At this point, Callen was willing to deal with anyone to get the information he wanted, and if that meant turning to gang members, drug runners, anyone, trying to flush Mattias out, he didn't care. He wanted Mattias.

Sam saw a half dozen of Salazar's gang members hanging around their boss, who was sitting in an old, overstuffed chair in front of the house that served as their headquarters. The lawn looked like it was last taken care of when the chair was new, maybe a decade ago.

Salazar got up as the two agents approached the chain link gate to the property. "Hey, Navy cops. Whacha doing here? You missing a boat, or something? You can look inside, but I don't think we got it."

The rest of the gang laughed, and elbowed one another at their boss' attempt at humor.

Callen looked at Salazar and told him, "We didn't come here to roust you. We need your help, you and your boys."

Salazar looked at his men, "What, your enlistment numbers are down and you want us to join?" He started laughing at his own joke, and his gang members quickly followed suit.

"No," Callen said. "I want you to help find someone for me." He opened up one of the larger pictures of Mattias. "This man. If you find him and deliver him to me, I am ready to give you a substantial reward."

"What, a few hundred dollars? That's hardly worth my time."

"No," Callen said. "It's closer to a quarter million. Would that be worth your time?"

"You ain't got that kind of money, and you sure wouldn't give it to me."

"We get the man; you get the money. No strings. No questions."

"You sure must want this guy bad."

"Yeah. We do." Callen said with a snarl as he handed out a couple of the wanted posters to the gang members.

"Hey, Navy cop. That money is mine."

"When we get the man we want. Not before." Callen told him as he and Sam headed back to the Challenger to continue the search.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Later that day Eric's excited voice sounds in their coms. "Callen, Sam, how close are you guys to Marina del Rey?"

Sam asks him, "Eric, aren't you tracking us by GPS? You should know how far away we are."

"Normally I would, but now I'm busy trying to keep eyes on someone you are very interested in."

"Mattias?"

"Bingo. I caught him on a park camera in Burton Chace Park in Marina del Rey. He was meeting with someone. I think it was Mattias, who killed him. I'm running the victim through facial recognition right now to see what I can come up with."

"What about Mattias? Did you see where he went?"

"Yeah. It's really strange. It looks like he's just walking over toward Fisherman's Village. He's not trying to hide, not checking if anyone is following him."

"Thanks, Eric. We're ten minutes out. Keep following him so we can grab him."

"Got a match. The victim in the park was Ryan Green. Mattias must have taken his phone because it is still on and we are tracking it. He also used Ryan's credit card at a food truck in the village. We have no shots except a few from the back, but we are tracking him."

"Just pulling in. Eric, where is he."

"Got you guys. He's about five hundred feet ahead of you and a little off to the right. He's wearing a tan jacket, jeans, and a tan ball cap."

"Got him, Eric." They both drew their weapons. Sam circled off to the side while Callen approached from the rear. He got close enough to lay a hand on the suspect's shoulder as he said, "Federal agent. Freeze."

Just then a shot rang out, and their suspect crumpled to the ground, bleeding from a chest wound. Callen thought he saw some movement on the roof of a nearby building, and made his way toward it, looking for an entrance.

Sam went over to the victim, and saw that he was dead, but he was definitely not Mattias. Taking out his cell phone, he snapped a picture and sent it to Eric, asking him to run it through the facial recognition program, and to send LAPD to deal with the body. Then he looked to see if he could find his partner and catch the shooter.

Callen had made it to the roof and saw no one. He looked at where the shot came from, and immediately determined that it was a professional hit. The roof was clear of any clues. The shooter had policed his brass, leaving absolutely nothing. The agent called down to his partner "Clear," and went back down the stairs to wait and give a statement to LAPD.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Eric called, just as they were getting back into the Challenger to head back to the boat shed.

"What you got for us, Eric?" CCallen asked.

"The guy you were following that got shot has only been here in the country for about two months. His passport claims that he is Dimitri Zaytesev, a Russian who was here on a student visa. But I have checked all the major schools in the area, and none of them have him enrolled for classes."

"Good going, Eric. I guess we need to pay a visit to our friend, Arkady, to find out how the Russians are mixed up in this."

"Do you want me to call Svetlana and find out where he is right now?" Eric volunteered.

"If it's not too much trouble for you, Eric, that would be great."

"I'll call you back when I find out."

Sam looked at Callen and raised his eyebrow.

"Callen looked at him and asked, "What?"

"If it's not too much trouble to call your girlfriend and have an official reason to talk to her? Come on G. You know he's seeing her."

"Yeah, but I figured that I would give young love a boost."

Just then Eric called again. "He's not at the Cultural Ministry. Today's the day he goes over to the gym. You have the address on your phones."

"Thanks again, Eric." Sam said as he turned the Challenger around and headed off to the direction of the gym.

When they entered, they asked the receptionist at the desk where they could find Mr. Kolcheck.

"He's either in the sauna or over in the weight room," she answered.

They went over to the weight room and saw Arkady there, flanked by two armed guards that kept scanning everyone else in the room.

"I'm getting a bad feeling about this, G." Sam said softly, indicating all the security they had seen on the way in.

"I know what you mean. It's more like an armed camp around here."

As they approached, the guards eyed the two agents suspiciously.

"I take it that this is not a social call. I didn't think my social secretary had placed you on the agenda for a meeting now. How did you find out where I was."

Callen smiled at him and said, "Your social secretary told us. How else would we find out?"

"So, what does NCIS want with me now? What do they presume that I am guilty of doing?" Arkady asked, trying lighten up what appeared to be a very serious mood that had settled over his guards.

Callen pulled out his phone, which caused one guard to go for his gun. "Easy." he said to the guard, "I'm just going for my phone." The guard nodded his head, but did not take his hand off his weapon.

"Have you ever seen this man, Arkady?" he asked the older man, showing him the picture that Eric had found of the man that Mattias had killed earlier.

"I have never seen him before. Should I know him?" Arkady asked.

His passport says he was Dimitri Zaytesev, a Russian who was here on a student visa for the past two months, but who never went to school. I am betting that if we look into it deeper we will find out that isn't even his real name."

"So Callen, do you know the name of every American who is in Moscow right now, who is there on a student visa, and are not who they say they are?"

"I don't worry about any spies we have in Moscow. I just worry about the ones who are right here and are looking for my boss."

"The Duchess of Deception? She always has had enemies who are looking to kill her."

"I'm talking about one specific enemy, Arkady. Mattias Draeger, and I think he wants to take her alive, not just kill her."

"So, it is as I feared. The "Cold War" is again becoming hot. This time it is going to be even more dangerous,"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Look around you, my friend. Do you not see all the precautions that I am taking? I have no fear of your government, or mine for that matter. I would go about my normal business if it were only our governments involved. But the players have changed. I am afraid of who is gunning for her, and for me too."

"Who is it that you are afraid of, Arkady."

"It is someone you should be afraid of too. These people think that there are still huge stockpiles of weapons laying around on both sides, and they want to find them, and control them, and use them, not as deterrents, like our countries did, but as weapons of terror and destruction. Rather than go through piles and piles of government documents, they just want to grab the people who might know about it, and find out what they know. They want all us old spys for our brains."

"And these players would be," Sam asked skeptically.

"People who it is not even safe to name, because even here, the walls may have ears and things that would be better left unsaid, might get back to them in Moscow."

"The Russian government is behind this?" Sam asked.

"I told you, it is not any government. If it were, I would not have to make the Cultural Center an armed camp. Now, I have told you what you came here to find out. I think it is time for you to go. Protect Hetty as much as you can. I like her. I would hate to see her gone." With those words he dismissed the agents and went back to his workout. One of the guards showed them back to their car, just to make sure that was where they were going.

While they were driving back toward the boat shed, Sam looked at Callen and asked him, "You think Arkady was talking about the Iskorenit cartel?"

"I don't think he could be talking about anyone else besides them."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

They were almost back at the boat shed when Callen's burn phone rang. He pulled it out and told Sam, "It's Salazar."

He put it on speaker so Sam could hear it too. "Hey, Navy cop, I want my money. I got your man here."

"We're on our way," Callen said and turned off the phone.

When they got back to Salazar's gang headquarters, everything was eerily silent. The chain link fence gate was wide open. No one was sitting on the overstuffed chair in the front yard. The door to the house was swinging freely from its hinges.

"You sure that they said they had Mattias?" Sam asked.

"You heard them on the phone. They said they had him and to bring the money."

"Well, we just better be careful." Sam said as he drew his gun and assumed the traditional search position.

"I agree," Callen replied as he too pulled his weapon and held it at the ready.

They stood on each side of the front door. "Federal agents." Sam called out. "NCIS" Callen added, as both of them entered the front room.

Three bodies lay dead on the floor, all of them Salazar's men. As they started to clear each room of the house, all they found were the dead bodies of Salazar's gang. Finally they came to the final room. A chair was set up in the middle of the room, with someone sitting in the chair. A hood covered the head, the legs were zip tied in two separate places, as were the arms. Both agents put their weapons away and looked at one another.

"You think..." Sam asked.

"Probably..." Callen answered

Callen walked over to the body and pulled the hood off the head. It was Salazar, with a very surprised look on his face.

Both agents heard a clink and a thud when Callen pulled off the hood.

"Grenade" Callen yelled as both he and Sam dove through different windows in the room.

There was a huge flash as the explosion blew the room apart.


	7. Bigger Problems for the Small Analyst

**Chapter 7: Bigger Problems for the Small Analyst**

**A/N: I know this update took forever and I apologize for the delay in posting this chapter - I wanted it to go in a different direction, but every time that I tried to do it that way, I felt like I was herding cats instead of plot bunnies - I finally just let them have their way and they have given me this as a Christmas gift - I now pass this gift on to you - May all the joys of whatever season that you celebrate be yours as we close off this year and enter 2015, looking forward to all the new stories that will be given to us.**

**A/N 2: The first half of Season 6 has already been broadcast - We have seen developments in the love lives of all the single team members and more of Sam's family history - Makes you wonder what is coming in the second half of the season - This story is going further and further AU - Some of the dialogue from previous canon episodes are used here - Parts of this story are condensed from other stories that I have already posted - Thanks again to G, my Russian thesaurus - I hope you enjoy it.**

Nell was somewhat apprehensive about Callen's plan for her to impersonate Henrietta Lange. Yes, they were about the same size, but the hair was completely different, and unless there was a way to age her skin, no one would believe the masquerade that they were trying to pull off. Since Hetty was in Washington, they had to let Ernesto Innocenti, work his magic to try to accomplish the impossible. Hetty had stolen Ernesto from MGM, where he had run the wardrobe department for their film division, and where he still had ties, so that those garments that were needed for any operation that were not in their small closets, could be borrowed from the studios. That was the reason why Hetty was so adamant about the clothing coming back undamaged, and if anything did happen to it, the agents were forced to eat the cost of repairs. Ernesto was the perfect person to achieve the exact fit on the women's gowns, making the final adjustments while they were dressing. Ernesto had no interest in women, having been married these past seven years to Fergus McDermott, a huge, well muscled, redheaded Irishman, who worked in the NCIS motor pool, and was as deft with a torque wrench, as Ernesto was with a needle.

Callen had called ahead, and let Ernesto know what he needed with Nell. Ernesto laughed, shaking his head, and promised him that the job would not be impossible, and that when he was done, even Hetty could not tell the difference from the back. Nell did not think that they could pull it off, but Callen explained that they would block her face and it would work. She resigned herself to the fact that this might be their only chance to get the people that were after Hetty.

Ernesto was finally ready to work his magic. He had Nell come with him into the small dressing area just off the wardrobe section. She took off her deep blue cardigan sweater, white blouse, and navy skirt. Ernesto helped her into a sky blue colored blouse and a smartly tailored, chestnut colored pantsuit. He helped her braid her hair and used bobby pins to secure it to the top of her head. Ernesto decided that a hair cap wasn't needed, because her hair was not that long. He just took a few more bobby pins to make sure none of Nell's hair would escape from under the wig. When he finally was satisfied, he took a wig off a wig form and carefully placed it on her head. As a final touch, the wardrobe manager added a black leather purse on a shoulder strap, where she could carry her service weapon, since the jacket of her pantsuit came down over her hips and hid her waist .

She looked at herself in the mirror. All she could see is a great big target painted on her back, She was reminded of a fly fishing show she saw on the learning channel. The flies were tied to look like something that the fish wanted to devour, and when they were put into use, the craftsmen who made these intricate lures were yelling "Here fishie, fishie." She was the lure, no, change that, she was the bait. The usual outcome for the fly fishermen was that whatever fish they were trying to lure usually took the bait and swallowed it as it was being consumed. Nell had no delusions that the probable outcome of this mission would be similar, even though it was Callen and Sam that were providing her backup.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Later that afternoon, a limousine pulled up in front of Dovecote, Hetty's home in Hollywood. Callen and Sam got out and escorted the petite person in the back seat up to the door, where she punched in the access code. Once inside, the woman turned to the two field agents and asked, "Okay, guys, where do you want me to go?" It is not Hetty, but Nell as a decoy, dressed in the wig and smart pants suit that Hetty would not have been ashamed to wear.

"Why don't you go upstairs. That's where Hetty would have gone. Sam is going to stay downstairs here and act as your bodyguard. I'm gonna leave and drop the limo and pick up the Challenger, this way if anyone has eyes on the place, maybe it will lure them out." Callen laid out their planned operation.

Nell went upstairs and looked into the library. There was a small window that overlooked the back of the house and she decided to keep watch there. Not more than ten minutes after Callen left, the new hit team made their appearance. Sam counted at least six guys that piled out of the SUV to go after their fake Hetty. He looked for a central defensive position and pulled out his gun.

Sam encouraged his partner to hurry. "We could use a hand, G."

"Two minutes out and coming in hot." he replied.

"They're not gonna wait for you. Here we go!" The big man said.

Nell gave them an update. "I count at least three coming in the front. Two more are headed around back. They all have automatic weapons."

One of the men coming in from the front poked another when he saw the interior stairway, "Upstairs," he whispered.

"Nell, one's coming up," Sam said over the com. Nell didn't reply, and Sam could only hope that she would again trust the training she received and be able to deal with him.

Downstairs, Sam shot one guy and wounded another that was climbing up the stairs to get at Nell, but he had to flee the return fire from another opponent.

Nell ran to the library and hid behind the door. She had her gun drawn and was peeking out through the partially opened door, watching as the man climbed the stairs. He silently stepped onto the landing, in front of the library door, and started walking in the opposite direction down the hallway.

Nell heard the sound of tires screeching and knew that Callen had arrived. It was confirmed when over the com she heard his voice ask, "Nell, status?"

She answered him in a barely audible whisper, "I'm holding the high ground."

Callen tried to help reassure everyone they would get through this by telling the other two, "Kensi and Deeks are five minutes out." He had come in from the back and ducked down next to Sam.

Nell continued to watch the back of the man as he walked toward the far end of the hall and checked out the other rooms, knowing he was looking for her. All of a sudden her cell phone started to buzz.

As soon as she answered it, Hetty could hear the sounds of gunfire that came from downstairs. "Nell, what's going on?" she asked

"Little busy here, Hetty. We are under attack here at Dovecote."

Hetty was surprised, "You're in my house?!"

Nell whispered into the phone, just loud enough for Hetty to hear her, "Yes, and we're outmanned and outgunned."

"Where in the house are you?" Hetty asked.

"Upstairs, in the library." the younger woman said.

"Oh, bugger. Listen carefully, Miss Jones, ..." Hetty continued to give her some specific instructions on what she needed to do.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

The guy searching for Nell heard the noise of the cell phone too, wheeled around and very slowly started to come back the way he came, toward her, a smile on his face. Nell left her position behind the partially closed door and backed into the small bathroom that was off to one side of the library. She closed the door behind her, pulled off the wig and threw it on the small vanity. Looking for some place that gave her a small sense of being able to defend herself, Nell scrunched down between the toilet and the wall. Holding her Glock 26 in both hands, she rested the butt of the gun on the toilet seat and aimed it at the door. After a short time, there was a burst of automatic fire that tore through the bathroom door and the adjoining wall, about four feet off the ground. Nell almost jumped up out of her place of hiding at the sound, but stayed scrunched down and none of the bullets hit her. The door slowly opened out, and Nell saw the nose of the attacker's MP5K-PDW submachine gun slowly enter. Nell steadied herself, waiting for the man to show himself.

He entered the bathroom, looking toward the wig that was sitting on the vanity. In the last split second, he saw Nell hunched up behind the toilet, her gun aimed at his chest. A look of surprise came over his face, whether it was because of the young face that didn't belong on the body of Hetty Lange, the person they had come to capture or kill, or the fact that Nell had already fired her Glock three times and instantaneously he felt all three shells enter his chest and end his life. He fell face down on the floor, his left hand still on the doorknob, pulling it closed and trapping the young analyst there with his dead body.

Sam looked at his partner before ducking down again as another blast of shots came from an automatic weapon. "You know, G, these guys came for Hetty at night with sedatives and syringes. Today they aren't here to kidnap anyone."

Callen responded, "Yeah, they're here to kill us."

Just then they hear a short burst of gunfire from upstairs, followed by shots from a pistol.

Callen yelled out, "Nell!"

The two agents ran for the stairs. The man that Sam had wounded wanted to stop them, but Callen shot him again, ending his threat to them as he died. He went up a few steps while Sam protected him and then stopped to protect Sam as he scrambled to reach the base of the stairway. Alternating between running up a few steps and protecting his partner, both agents safely reached the landing. The opposing gunfire continued to try to hit them.

Callen yelled out again, "Nell?!"

Sam looked at him and said, "Go! I got these jokers! Go! Find her!"

Leaving Sam to cover the stairway, Callen went and entered the library, preparing himself for the worst. The closed adjoining bathroom door and wall was full of bullets holes and looked like someone sprayed it with a burst from an automatic weapon. He slowly opened the door, becoming very anxious when he saw the crumpled male body lying on the floor, motionless, blood pooling around his head and chest area. "Nell, it's me." he called out again, almost afraid of what awaited him, praying that she would answer.

He peered around the corner of the door frame and slowly stuck his head into the room. Then he saw her, hunched up and tucked away on the floor in the corner, hiding behind the toilet, her gun trained on him, or whoever else might have come through the door. The young woman had a look on her face that Callen had never seen there before, fear, determination, relief.

Concerned for what happened to his young analyst, he asked, "You okay?"

She shook her head, like she was trying to wake up or come out of a trance, and finally recognized who he was. "Yeah," she told him.

He offered her his hand to help her up to a standing position. "Come on, we've got to fight our way out of here," he told her. They stepped over the dead intruder and joined Sam out in the hallway.

Nell looked up and down the hallway and then she headed off toward one end. "Guys, this way."

Sam remained where he was near the top of the stairs, trading shots with the intruders, determined to keep them from coming up and attacking them from the rear.

Nell yelled over her shoulder, "Follow me."

Gunfire continued to come from the main level. Sam pulled back behind the wall, while Callen ran to catch Nell.

"Nell, this is a dead end!" he told her.

Sam emptied his clip and took off after the other two, putting a new clip in as he ran.

Callen grabbed her and spun her around, "Nell!"

Sam reached the other two and looked around. There were no doors offering an escape into another room. There were no windows offering a way outside. All there Sam could see was the end of the hallway with a big wardrobe placed up against the wall. "Nell, that's a dead end." he told her.

"No, Hetty called and told me about this." she said as she started pulling open the wardrobe. She moved all the clothing to one side and then started to run her hand along the back. There was a small click and then one edge swung away, revealing the secret stairway behind it.

Nell led the way down the stairs and Sam brought up the rear, rearranging the clothing to look like it hadn't been disturbed and then pulling the secret door shut behind him. "Of course Hetty would have a secret passageway in her house. Why didn't I realize that. I just wish that she hadn't built it for people who were her size and not mine."

"You could go back and use the regular stairway, big guy." Callen said.

Sam just growled at him as he hit his head one more time on a beam that supported the low ceiling.

As they descend the secret passage stairway, Callen once again voiced his appreciation to his boss, "I love Hetty."

Sam just rubbed his forehead as he remembered to duck under another one of the supporting beams, "I just wish she wasn't so small."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

A few moments later they were outside. Sirens were wailing as several LAPD cruisers had arrived. A Swat team was setting up in front of the house. Helicopter blades could be heard whirring from the police copter circling the building. The two remaining bad guys were trying to escape out the back. Callen was waiting for them with his gun drawn. "Federal agents!" he yelled.

One of the men stopped immediately, throwing his hands up into the air. The other one stopped, but was still looking for some place to make his escape. Kensi and Deeks showed themselves, both with their guns trained on the two men.

Kensi shouted out a warning to the one looking to escape, "Don't even think about it. I have had a terrible day already."

Seeing that there was no way out, the second man dropped his weapon and raised his hands too.

Kensi and Deeks slowly advanced toward the two. "Down on the ground!" Kensi ordered the two men.

"All the way." Deeks ordered, when they didn't move as fast as he would like.

The two men complied and were taken into custody. Kensi kneeled into the back of each of them as she pulled their hands behind them and zip tied them together. They then pulled them to their feet and put them into two separate police cruisers, as they helped the others process the crime scene.

Callen, Sam, and Nell went back into the house to survey the damage. "How are we ever gonna explain this to Hetty?" Callen asked as he shook his head and started to think of how much would be deducted from his next check to pay for all the repairs.

Sam looked at him with a huge smile on his face, "What do you mean, we, G? We are not gonna have to say anything, but I'm sure that you will think of something."

Callen grabbed his arm and looked him straight in the face as he said, "Oh, I get it. You get to have the lovely artful talks with her about flowers and butterflies, while I have to deliver all the bad news?"

Sam pulled out his camera and took a picture of one of the dead men's faces. Looking at his partner, he said, "That works for me."

Callen just grunted, "Uh-huh."

Neither of the men noticed that Nell did not participate in any of this banter. She was just walking through the rooms with a blank expression on her face.

When they had exited the house and saw that reinforcements had arrived, Nell's adrenaline level again started to return back to normal and her brain switched over to automatic pilot mode. She knew what she was supposed to do, but she had no memory of ever doing it. She walked around the first floor of Hetty's home, watching the two senior agents process the scene before the cleanup crew would come in and do their work. Sam and Callen went up the stairs to check out the man that Nell had killed, but she could not go with them. Nell just sat down on the first step, her head bowed and arms wrapped around her, and waited for them to come back down.

Having done all they could at the scene, they climbed into the Challenger and Sam dropped Nell and Callen of at the limo. Callen took out the keys and told her to get in so he could drive it back to the motor pool. She got in, but just looked out the side window with a vacant stare as Callen drove off, successfully navigating the LA traffic, and pulling into the underground garage. She waited as he dropped off the keys and signed in the vehicle, gladly checking the box that said it was not involved in an accident or fire fight.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

The two of them entered the Mission. Granger looked up from Hetty's desk and saw the blank expression on Nell's face. He called Callen over and asked, "Is she okay?"

Callen sort of shrugged his shoulders, expressing his uncertainty, "She's spent time in the field, but she has never killed anyone before."

The Assistant Director scribbled down a few notes on a pad, "I would imagine that it was either him or her."

Callen nodded his head as he watched Nell go down the hallway, "Yeah, it was. But it doesn't make it any easier."

Granger truly surprised Callen as he seemed to express his concern about what this will mean for Nell to continue to work at OSP, "Keep an eye on her. Let me know if there's a problem."

Still not knowing what to make of that remark, Callen looked at him and insisted, "She'll be okay."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Nell was still in automatic mode. She entered the mission and went over to the women's locker room. There she took her regular clothes from her cubicle and changed from the garments that made her appear to be Hetty. Then she took the vestments over to wardrobe and logged all of that in, being careful to hang up the pants suit on the wooden hangers they were on when she first received it. She saw the empty wig form, as she brushed out her hair with her fingers, remembering that she had left the wig in the upstairs bathroom of Dovecote. Nell wrote a little note where to find the wig and pinned it to the empty wig form. She looked at everything she had done here and tried to think of anything else that she forgot.

She started walking to the door to start the drive home when her mind switched from analyst mode to that of agent. Turning around, she went over into the armory. She pulled out her Glock 26 and removed the clip, which she put in the reload bin. She then pulled out two more 10 shot clips and signed the sheet, indicating that she was the one that took them.

She stopped at the door to the car park, turned, and looked around one final time in agent mode, trying to think if there was anything else she needed to do here. After a brief pause, she opened the door and went out to her car. She found Callen waiting there for her. He drove her over to the boat shed, and then had Deeks drive her home with Kensi following behind to bring him back again.

Arriving at her apartment, Nell closed and locked the door, put her service weapon into the lock box that was built into the small table. She went into her small bathroom and barely got the toilet seat up before she puked up her guts. It seemed all her courage and adrenalin drained out of her with the contents of her stomach, She had no strength to get up and go to the sink to wipe her face, so she just crawled over to the bathtub, wet the washcloth that had been draped over the side of the tub, wiped the spittle that remained around her mouth, and just collapsed onto the floor. Unfortunately, her exhaustion did not keep the nightmares away.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

The two junior agents had taken their two prisoners and delivered them to the boat shed, placing each one in a separate interrogation room. Sam had sent the pictures of the four dead intruders in to Eric so he could run them through all of his facial recognition programs. From their questioning of their prisoners and the information that Eric was able to procure by working his computer magic, it was discovered that five of the gunmen were just local muscle, probably hired just for this one job. But the sixth member of the hit team, the one that Nell had killed, was Russian, and was reportedly a member of the Iskorenit cartel. When Callen, heard that, he slammed both his fists down on the interrogation table, got up and walked out the door. Sam put his hand on Callen's shoulder, but he just shook it off. Not saying a word to anyone, he left the boat shed, got into his car and drove off.

Sam immediately called Eric. "Keep Callen under GPS surveillance, Eric. I'm afraid he is gonna go off the reservation."

"Sorry to tell you this, Sam, but he has already disabled the GPS tracker on his car and his phone. Callen has gone "lone wolf" on us again.

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

When Callen decided what he was going to do, he knew he needed help from Nell. He tried calling her personal cell, but it just went over to voice mail, "This is Nell, leave a message." Every fifteen minutes he placed another call, and every time it went over to voice mail.

He swung by her apartment to see if she was there. Her car was in the parking lot so he went to her door and asked. "Nell, are you there?" as he knocked, but silence was all that greeted him. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Callen once again dialed her number. He could hear the phone ringing inside her apartment, but again it went to voice mail. "I know that you're in there, Nell. It's me, Callen. Won't you please let me in?" but she still would not answer. After another five minutes of waiting there with no response from her, Callen went back to his car and made his way back to the boat shed. Since he could not get Nell to help him, he knew that he would have to contact Eric for help and come back onto the reservation.

On his way back, he put in a call to ops, but got Kirstin Chambers instead of Eric.

"Hi, Kirstin, it's Callen. I take it that Nell called in sick that you are filling in for her?"

"I don't know, Callen. Assistant Director Granger has had me over on this side today, but he didn't say where Nell was or what she was doing." The young woman had cleared one of her screens and had typed this message, "Callen's on the line." and pointed it toward Eric as she threw a pencil at him to gain his attention. "I can switch you over to Eric, if you want."

"I suppose he is really upset with me, for what I did today, but, yeah, let me talk to him."

"Callen," the senior tech was almost shouting over the phone, "where are you? Are you all right? We all have been worried about you."

"Eric, calm down. I'm on my way back to the boat shed. I haven't been hurt, so you can tell Sam he doesn't have to worry about me. What's going on with Nell? I am really worried about her, now."

"I don't know, Callen. She rode in the limo back here when you checked it in. Then she just left here, without saying a word to anyone and got a ride home with Kensi. I have tried to contact her several times, but she just lets her phone go over to voice mail without picking up at all. Her GPS trackers on her car and phone say that she is over at her apartment, but beyond that, I have no idea."

Callen knew that was not a good sign. "She had a rough day today, Eric. One of those hit men made it all the way upstairs, and found Nell in the bathroom off of the library. I don't know if he hesitated because he saw Hetty's clothes on a much younger woman, or what, but Nell was able to trust her training again and shoot him. He fell down dead in front of her, and ended up blocking the door."

"Shit," Eric exclaimed. "This is her first kill, isn't it."

"Yeah," Callen confirmed. "She must be going through a hell of a time right now, and the worst part about it is that she is trying to do it all on her own. He ordered Eric in the most authoritarian voice he could dream up, "Get ahold of Nate Getz. I don't care who you have to call or what favors you have to call in, Eric. Tell him the circumstances of the shoot, and ask him, for me, if he will come back and work with Nell. I know they have some history between them. She is part of the team, and we need to do everything we can to help her. I don't want to lose Nell from the team over something like this."

**)( )( )( )( )( )(**

Two days later Nate was knocking at Nell's door. "I know you're home, Nell, and I'm not going away. I will stay here knocking on your door until you finally answer. After about ten minutes of this, Nate finally heard the lock being opened and the door swung back. He entered, told her to get dressed because he wanted to go somewhere to talk.

Nate drove the two of them back out to Dockweiler State Beach. He pulled into the parking lot and parked near the spot they were in not so long ago. The psychologist reached into the back seat of his rented Escolade and grabbed a folded up blanket. He got out, went around to the other side, opened her door, and led her out onto the beach. When they got near the water, he spread out the blanket and invited her to sit down next to him.

Nate looked at her and said, "I decided to come back here with you because you told me last time how calming just sitting and watching the ocean can be, how you feel that you can imagine the water taking away all your problems, dragging them out to sea, and leaving you new and clean. That is what I hope we can accomplish. I know it will not happen today, but I hope we can find a way to start the process."

"I just don't know anymore, Nate. I don't know if I can work for NCIS any more."

"And why is that? You haven't done anything wrong, have you?"

"Nate, every once in a while, they call me 'Kid' and I wonder if that's how they really see me, or if that's what I really am."

"What do you mean by that, Nell?"

"Sometimes I wonder if I still am a kid. You know how kids are, always playing cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers. I've modernized it a little bit so now it is spies and government agents."

"Do you think you're playing a game, Nell?'

"It's so easy to let it fall into something like that when you're up in ops. You see what's happening play out on the screens, hear the gunfire and explosions over the coms, and when you want it to be done, you can turn it all off. Then you can take a bathroom break, grab a cup of tea, or even pack up and go home. Then one day, something like this happens, and it all becomes too real."

"But you know that is what is really happening, all the time, don't you."

"I understand it. Mentally, I comprehend what is going on. I see that the members of the team have to shoot people. I recognize that a lot of the time it is a situation where they have to shoot first, before the person they are after does the same thing to them..."

Nate, "But...?"

"Yeah, there's always a 'but', isn't there?" Nell dropped her head and emotionally appeared to curl up upon herself, trying to get to a fetal position. "But, when you have to go out into the field, and experience it for yourself, it is no longer seeing and recognizing someone is shot and killed. It becomes a knowing that you have pulled the trigger and ended someone's life. You begin to realize what exactly you have done. And that's when all understanding just leaves."

"What kind of understanding are you talking about? You know that the man coming after you was trying to abduct you or kill you, because he thought you were Hetty?"

"That's exactly what I am talking about, Nate. I know that up here," and she raised the fingertips of her right hand to touch her forehead. "I can go through all of the reasons why I was up in Hetty's bathroom, my weapon in my hand, and that man was laying there on the floor, blood coming from those fatal wounds. They are all logical. They go from A to B to C, all in the proper order. I just don't know that, if I am faced with the same situation ever again, the outcome will be the same."

"Nell, none of us can predict the future. The circumstances will never be exactly the same as they were for you."

Nell turned to him and grabed his hands. "You still don't understand, Nate. If I were faced with a situation that was the same, and I realize that it wouldn't be identical, but if it were the same, where it would be either him or me, I don't know if... I... could... take... the... shot... again."

"Why would you say that? Especially if it was a situation where he would do it to you in an instant."

"Because up until now, I've known it all here," again she touched her forehead. "But not down here," as she pointed to her heart. Some woman had her son growing there for nine months, near her heart all that time, giving him the love he needed to survive, and I ended that life. Now, I also realize what has happened here," as she laid both her hands over her heart, and then suddenly broke out crying.

Nate wraped his arms around her, trying to comfort her. "It's all right, Nell. It's okay. I'm here with you."

She started blubbering to Nate. "But it's not okay, and I don't know why."

"Why...?"

"Why am I here, and he is not? What makes me so special, that it was decided that I should live? Am I that good that I deserve it? I don't think so. Was he that bad, that he deserved to die? I can't imagine that either. So tell me, Nate, why him and not me? Why did he die, and I live? Maybe if you can come up with a good enough reason, I can believe it too."

"Nell, you know that I don't have the answers about life and death. I'm a psychologist; I'm not God. I don't have the power to decide who lives or who dies. I don't know why it happens, at least most of the time. All I know is that it does happen."

"Both he and I started life out the same way, Both of us were conceived, both were carried and nourished in the womb by our mothers, both of us were loved, living there for nine months, listening to our mothers' hearts, as they beat to give us life. I don't know if he had a family that loved him while he was growing up, or if he found someone to love and started a family with them. No matter what happened in his past life, I ended it. I killed him, Nate. I KILLED him." With those words, she buried her head into his shoulder and started crying all over again.

Nate let her cry for a while, then pulled her away from his shoulder as he went into his analyst tone as he said to her, "Nell, look at me." and waited until she complied.

"Nell, we have talked about some of this already. Part of what you are feeling right now is because of your control issues. You know how much they can affect you. Most of the time you can usually keep these under control. But this issue is far too big, and too important for you, for you to try to solve it for yourself."

"What do you mean?"

"Your mind has convinced you that there is a certain way that things are supposed to work for things to be right, at least in your way of thinking. If something does not go the way you want it to go, some way different than the way you want to control it, you see it as something wrong. Nell, you cannot control everything in this world. It would be nice if each of us could do that, but we just can't."

"So how is that part of my control issues?"

"Who controlled the fact that the man who would have killed you has possible ties to the Iskorenit cartel, you or him?"

"He did, I guess."

"Who controlled the fact that he came to Los Angeles looking to abduct or kill Hetty, you or him?"

"He did." Nell's voice was starting to get softer and softer.

"If he wasn't part of the Iskorenit cartel, and he didn't come to Los Angeles to make the attempt on Hetty, would he still be alive?"

"I guess." her voice was just above a whisper.

"So, is it his fault or yours that he broke in and tried to kill you?"

"But I pulled the trigger, Nate. If I didn't, he would still be alive." It almost seemed like she was shouting out these words to everyone, that the whole world should know what she had done.

Nate softened his voice to try to calm her down. "But, Nell, if you wouldn't have pulled the trigger, we wouldn't be here having this conversation. You probably would be dead. He wouldn't have let you live when he found out that you were not Hetty."

"I could have shot him in the arm or someplace else to wound him. I didn't have to kill him."

"Are you sure you are that good a shot that you could have hit him there, and are you sure that would have stopped him?"

Nell didn't say anything. She just bowed her head a little bit and shook it, giving him a negative answer.

"Would he have done the same to you, Nell?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Nell..."

"Okay, maybe he wouldn't."

They continued to talk through the afternoon. Nate knew that he was not going to be able to "fix" her in just one session. Nor would he be able to do it alone. It was going to take the combined efforts of all the members of her family, her team, to help soothe and heal her emotional wounds. They all needed to make her aware that even in the situations in which she found that she had absolutely no control, her training, her values, everything that made her the person she was, would come through for her. Only then could she see that her life still has meaning and a purpose instead of her feelings of being out of control. Then only could she exchange her grief for joy, substitute peace for depression, swap darkness with light and to replace her despair with hope.

Nell knew what she needed to say to Nate, that he could clear her psychologically so that she could return to work. But she knew that she just couldn't say them to him, because he knew that she knew all the right words, but he also knew that she would just be going through the motions and mouthing meaningless words and phrases to him. Until she can get her mind around this situation, one way or another, she doubted if Nate, or anyone else for that matter, could help her.


End file.
